Mark The Day

On July 2, 1865, William Booth and his wife, Catherine Booth, founded the Christian Mission in London's East End. Their goal was to bring practical help and Christian teaching to people struggling with poverty and hardship. Inspired by military organization, Booth introduced ranks such as officers and recruits, believing discipline and structure would strengthen the movement. Women were given leadership roles alongside men, an uncommon practice for the time.

The Christian Mission quickly expanded its work into some of London's poorest communities, opening soup kitchens and offering both physical assistance and spiritual support. Its energetic public preaching and unusual methods were not welcomed by everyone, and members frequently faced hostility, fines, and even imprisonment as authorities attempted to curb their activities.

In 1878, the organization adopted the name the The Salvation Army, and two years later established its first branch in the United States. During the Great Depression and both World Wars, the organization became widely respected for providing food, shelter, and support to civilians and military personnel alike. Today, the Salvation Army operates in more than 130 countries, delivering disaster relief, rehabilitation programs, community services, hospitals, thrift stores, and other charitable initiatives, supported through donations and the proceeds of its retail operations.

On September 26, 1580, English seaman Francis Drake sailed the Golden Hind into Plymouth, completing an extraordinary voyage around the world and becoming the first English captain to accomplish a circumnavigation. Drake had departed England in December 1577 with five ships on an expedition aimed largely at Spanish possessions in the Americas. Attrition quickly reduced his fleet: ships were abandoned, lost to storms or forced to turn back while attempting the dangerous passage through the Strait of Magellan. By the time Drake entered the Pacific, only the Golden Hind remained with him.

Drake sailed north along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish settlements and capturing valuable ships and cargo before continuing along the western coast of North America. In 1579, he stopped somewhere on the Pacific coast—traditionally associated with northern California—to repair the Golden Hind. He named the surrounding territory Nova Albion and claimed it for Queen Elizabeth I. Rather than retracing his dangerous route around South America, Drake then headed west across the Pacific, eventually sailing through the East Indies, across the Indian Ocean and around Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Nearly three years after leaving England, the Golden Hind returned to Plymouth carrying captured treasure as well as valuable geographical and navigational information. Queen Elizabeth rewarded Drake the following year by knighting him aboard the Golden Hind. He subsequently became one of the most famous seamen of the Elizabethan era and played an important role in England's defense against the Spanish Armada in 1588. Drake remained active at sea until his death near Panama in 1596.

On September 26, 1820, American frontiersman Daniel Boone died at the home of his son Nathan near present-day Defiance, Missouri. Born in Pennsylvania in 1734 to a Quaker family, Boone moved with his parents to North Carolina's Yadkin Valley while still young. Formal education held relatively little attraction for him, but the surrounding wilderness certainly did. He developed exceptional skills as a hunter, marksman and woodsman and soon began undertaking increasingly ambitious expeditions into territory west of the Appalachian Mountains.

In 1769, Boone and several companions traveled through the Cumberland Gap and explored Kentucky. After an unsuccessful attempt to settle there with his family in 1773, he returned two years later and helped establish a route through the wilderness to the Kentucky River. Known as Boone's Trace and later incorporated into the Wilderness Road, the route became an important pathway for settlers moving westward. Boone was closely associated with the settlement of Boonesborough, where years of conflict accompanied the expansion of European-American settlement into lands already inhabited and used by Native peoples.

Boone became famous during his own lifetime, particularly after writer John Filson published an account of his adventures in 1784. His reputation eventually grew into the popular image of the rugged American frontiersman, although his own fortunes were considerably less secure. Problems involving land claims cost him much of the property he had acquired in Kentucky, and in 1799 he moved west again, eventually settling in what was then Spanish Missouri. Even in later life Boone continued hunting and exploring, remaining closely connected to the wilderness that had shaped both his life and his legend.

On September 26, 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show opened in U.S. theaters, bringing Richard O'Brien's outrageous stage musical to the big screen. The story follows newly engaged Brad and Janet, played by Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, who become stranded during a storm and seek help at a nearby castle. Instead, they encounter the flamboyant Dr. Frank-N-Furter, played by Tim Curry, and an assortment of decidedly unusual residents gathered to witness the unveiling of his muscular creation, Rocky Horror. Mixing comedy, rock music, sexuality and affectionate spoofs of old science-fiction and horror movies, the film was unlike almost anything else playing at the time.

Audiences initially stayed away, and the movie appeared destined to become an eccentric box-office failure. Its fortunes changed when theaters began giving it late-night screenings, particularly the Waverly Theater in New York City's Greenwich Village. Midnight audiences transformed watching the film into a performance of its own, dressing as characters, shouting responses at the screen and eventually introducing props timed to particular scenes. Songs including "Time Warp," "Science Fiction/Double Feature," "Dammit Janet" and Meat Loaf's "Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul" helped turn screenings into something resembling a party where the movie happened to be playing in the background.

The participatory midnight tradition spread to theaters around the country and gave The Rocky Horror Picture Show an extraordinary second life. Its celebration of eccentricity and individual expression attracted generations of devoted fans, while newcomers continued discovering that merely sitting quietly through the movie was not necessarily part of the arrangement. The film became famous for its exceptionally long theatrical history, and in 2005 the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry as a work considered culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

On September 26, 2005, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning announced that the Provisional Irish Republican Army had completed a major process of putting its weapons beyond use. The announcement followed the IRA's July declaration that it was ending its armed campaign and directing its members to pursue objectives through peaceful and political means. The decommissioning took place privately under the supervision of the independent commission, led by Canadian General John de Chastelain, with two clergymen serving as additional witnesses. The commission reported that the weapons involved represented the totality of the IRA arsenal under its control.

The development marked an important stage in the Northern Ireland peace process following decades of conflict known as the Troubles. The 1998 Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement had established a framework for power sharing, political cooperation and the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, but disagreements over IRA disarmament repeatedly contributed to political tensions and interruptions in Northern Ireland's devolved government. By September 2005, the decommissioning commission concluded that the IRA had fulfilled its commitment to put its arms beyond use.

The announcement was welcomed as a significant step toward consolidating the peace process, although some unionist politicians remained skeptical about whether every IRA weapon had actually been surrendered or destroyed. Subsequent monitoring reports acknowledged reports that some weapons might have remained outside the decommissioning process, possibly retained locally without authorization from the organization's leadership, while stating that this did not alter the assessment that the IRA leadership had chosen a political rather than terrorist strategy. The decommissioning nevertheless became an important milestone in Northern Ireland's transition away from decades of paramilitary violence.

On September 27, 1540, Pope Paul III formally approved the Society of Jesus, establishing the Jesuits as an official religious order of the Roman Catholic Church. The movement had been organized by Ignatius of Loyola, a former Spanish soldier who experienced a profound religious conversion and later became a priest. In 1534, Ignatius and six companions pledged themselves to poverty, chastity and missionary service, initially hoping to travel to the Holy Land. Warfare prevented that journey, so they instead offered their services to the pope in Rome. Paul III accepted their proposal, and the Society of Jesus soon became an influential force within the Catholic Church.

The Jesuits expanded rapidly under Ignatius, combining missionary work with an unusually strong commitment to education. They became important participants in the Catholic Reformation, commonly called the Counter-Reformation, while missionaries traveled far beyond Europe to places including India, Brazil, Ethiopia and parts of Africa. Jesuits established schools and colleges, and Ignatius founded institutions in Rome that included the Roman College, which later became the Pontifical Gregorian University. Jesuit missionaries eventually traveled throughout Asia and the Americas, sometimes becoming among the first Europeans to establish sustained contact with distant communities. Their missions could be extremely dangerous, and many Jesuits faced persecution, imprisonment or death.

Political opposition to the Jesuits increased during the 18th century as several European monarchies sought to limit the order's influence. After Jesuits were expelled from a number of countries, Pope Clement XIV formally suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773. The suppression lasted until 1814, when Pope Pius VII restored the order throughout the Catholic Church. Ignatius of Loyola, who had died in 1556 after seeing the organization grow to more than 1,000 members, was canonized in 1622. The Society of Jesus continues to operate internationally, particularly through education, scholarship, missionary activity and other Catholic ministries.

On September 27, 1888, London's Central News Agency received a letter written in red ink and addressed “Dear Boss.” Its author claimed responsibility for the brutal killings then terrifying London's Whitechapel district and signed it with a name that would become infamous: “Jack the Ripper.” The writer threatened further murders and mutilations, although police and journalists suspected from the beginning that the letter might be a hoax. The agency forwarded it to Scotland Yard two days later. After two more women, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, were murdered on September 30, police released copies of the letter in hopes that someone might recognize the handwriting. Instead, publication helped spread the Jack the Ripper name throughout Britain and beyond.

Eleven murders committed in Whitechapel and nearby areas between 1888 and 1891 became part of the broader police investigation known as the Whitechapel murders. Five victims — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly — are traditionally grouped as the “canonical five” most commonly attributed to the Ripper, although even that grouping remains a matter of historical debate. Newspapers eagerly reported the crimes and applied various names to the unidentified killer before “Jack the Ripper” captured the public imagination. A second communication, the “Saucy Jacky” postcard, reached the Central News Agency on October 1 and claimed responsibility for the September 30 killings. Hundreds of purported Ripper letters subsequently arrived, the overwhelming majority regarded as hoaxes.

Neither the murderer nor the person who wrote the “Dear Boss” letter has ever been conclusively identified, and there is no reliable evidence proving that the killer wrote it. Some investigators and later researchers have suspected that journalists may have created the correspondence to generate publicity, with Central News Agency journalist Thomas Bulling among those subsequently connected to theories about its authorship. Despite generations of investigations, books and proposed suspects, the Whitechapel murders remain unsolved. The letter nevertheless had an extraordinary effect on history: whoever placed the words “Jack the Ripper” at its end supplied an unidentified Victorian murderer with a name that has survived for well over a century.

On September 27, 1960, British suffragette, socialist and anti-fascist campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst died in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Born in Manchester in 1882, she was the daughter of prominent suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst and the younger sister of Christabel Pankhurst. Sylvia studied at the Royal College of Art but increasingly devoted herself to political activism, joining her mother and sister in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 to campaign for women's voting rights. She was repeatedly arrested during suffrage demonstrations and endured imprisonment and hunger strikes, but her socialist politics and concern for working-class women increasingly placed her at odds with other WSPU leaders.

Sylvia believed political equality could not be separated from poverty, employment and living conditions, and she concentrated much of her work in London's working-class East End. She also opposed the WSPU's increasing use of militant tactics such as arson and later broke sharply with Emmeline and Christabel over their support for Britain's participation in World War I. After leaving the WSPU, Sylvia led the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, which evolved into the Workers' Suffrage Federation, and published newspapers including the Woman's Dreadnought and later the Workers' Dreadnought. Her politics moved further left after the Russian Revolution; she corresponded with Vladimir Lenin and participated in the early British communist movement, although disagreements over political organization soon separated her from the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In later decades, Pankhurst became a determined opponent of fascism, colonialism and Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia. Her support for Ethiopian independence developed into a lasting commitment to the country, and in 1956 she moved to Addis Ababa with her son, Richard. She continued writing and campaigning there until her death four years later. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie honored her with a state funeral, and Pankhurst was buried at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa — an extraordinary final chapter for the Manchester-born suffragette whose political causes had eventually carried her far beyond Britain's campaign for the vote.

On September 27, 1989, actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor made a dramatic exit from a Beverly Hills courtroom while a prosecutor was delivering closing arguments in her trial for striking a police officer. The case stemmed from a June traffic stop after Beverly Hills police officer Paul Kramer pulled Gabor over while she was driving her Rolls-Royce. Authorities said the car displayed expired registration tags and that Gabor's driver's license was expired; police also reported finding an open container of alcohol in the vehicle. While Kramer was conducting checks, Gabor drove away, prompting the officer to stop her again. During the resulting confrontation, she struck him. Gabor maintained that she had been responding to what she considered excessive treatment by the officer.

The resulting trial became almost as colorful as Gabor's celebrity persona. She attracted considerable press attention and repeatedly supplied reporters with memorable remarks, including comments about one prosecution witness that ran afoul of a judge's gag order. During closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Elden Fox accused Gabor of seeking publicity from the proceedings and questioned her truthfulness. Her attorney objected, but Gabor had heard enough: she left the courtroom in tears before the prosecutor had finished addressing the jury.

Later that day, the jury convicted Gabor of battery against a police officer as well as other charges arising from the traffic stop. She was ultimately ordered to serve three days in jail, perform 120 hours of community service and pay thousands of dollars in fines and other costs. The incident became one of the most widely reported episodes in the Hungarian-born celebrity's famously eventful public life. Gabor continued making occasional film and television appearances afterward and remained a fixture of celebrity culture for decades. She died in Los Angeles in 2016.