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 18, 1793, President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the United States Capitol in a Masonic ceremony, formally beginning construction of the building that would become the home of Congress. Establishing a permanent seat of government had taken several years: Congress had previously met in a succession of cities before the Residence Act of 1790 authorized creation of a federal district along the Potomac. Washington selected the site of what became the District of Columbia in 1791, while French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant planned the new capital. After L'Enfant's dismissal, a competition was held for the Capitol itself, and a design submitted by Scottish-born physician William Thornton was eventually approved.

Building the Capitol became a project spanning generations. Congress first occupied the north wing in 1800, while work continued on other portions of the structure. During the War of 1812, British troops entered Washington on August 24, 1814, and set fire to the Capitol, severely damaging the still-unfinished building, although its exterior structure survived. Reconstruction followed, and as the nation and Congress grew, major extensions were begun in the 1850s. The familiar cast-iron dome was constructed during the 1850s and 1860s, with work continuing even as the Civil War transformed Washington and placed extraordinary demands upon the Capitol and its surroundings.

The building Washington helped inaugurate with a cornerstone eventually became one of the most recognizable landmarks in the United States. The Capitol continued to be enlarged, restored and modernized long after its original sections were completed, accumulating an extensive collection of paintings, sculptures and architectural decoration along the way. Today it covers roughly four acres of ground and contains about 540 rooms, while the larger Capitol campus encompasses congressional offices, the Library of Congress and numerous other buildings and grounds. What began with a ceremonial stone lowered into a foundation trench in 1793 ultimately grew into an enormous complex at the center of the nation's legislative government.

On September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix was pronounced dead in London, bringing an extraordinary musical career to an end when he was just 27. Hendrix had spent the previous night with his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, at her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel in Notting Hill. He was later found unresponsive and taken by ambulance to St. Mary Abbots Hospital, where attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. A post-mortem concluded that Hendrix died from asphyxia after inhaling vomit while intoxicated with barbiturates. The precise circumstances surrounding his final hours have been debated ever since, but the official inquest recorded an open verdict because the evidence did not establish exactly how he had taken the drugs.

Born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle in 1942 and later renamed James Marshall Hendrix, he developed an intense fascination with the guitar while still young. After serving in the U.S. Army and training as a paratrooper, Hendrix worked the demanding rhythm-and-blues circuit, performing with musicians including Little Richard, the Isley Brothers and Curtis Knight before attempting to establish himself as a frontman. His fortunes changed dramatically in 1966 when former Animals bassist Chas Chandler saw him perform in New York and persuaded him to move to Britain. There, with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Singles including “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary,” followed by the 1967 album Are You Experienced, introduced audiences to a guitarist whose use of feedback, distortion, effects and sheer volume radically expanded ideas about what an electric guitar could do.

Hendrix became famous almost as quickly for his performances as for his recordings, playing behind his back or with his teeth and famously setting his guitar ablaze at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967. Albums including Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland further demonstrated that there was considerably more to Hendrix than theatrical fireworks, while his interpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969 became one of rock music's defining performances. His death came only a few years after he had first achieved international fame, leaving behind a remarkably small but enormously influential body of recorded work. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and Hendrix's influence can still be heard wherever somebody plugs in an electric guitar, turns up the amplifier and wonders just how much noise one instrument can possibly make.

On September 18, 1975, Patricia “Patty” Hearst, the newspaper heiress whose kidnapping had developed into one of the strangest criminal cases of the decade, was arrested by FBI agents in San Francisco. Hearst had disappeared more than 19 months earlier, when armed members of the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped her from her Berkeley apartment on February 4, 1974. The SLA initially described her as a prisoner and demanded that her wealthy family finance food distribution to people in need in California. Her father, newspaper executive Randolph Hearst, eventually spent millions of dollars on the program, but his daughter was not released. Instead, recordings subsequently emerged in which Hearst announced that she had joined the SLA, adopted the name “Tania” and rejected her previous life.

The case became even more sensational on April 15, 1974, when surveillance photographs showed Hearst carrying a weapon during the SLA's robbery of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. The following month she was linked to an incident at a Los Angeles sporting-goods store, shortly before police surrounded an SLA hideout in Los Angeles. Six SLA members, including leader Donald DeFreeze, died during the resulting shootout and fire, but Hearst and several other members were elsewhere and remained fugitives. For more than a year she moved between hiding places before authorities finally located her in a San Francisco apartment. Hearst was arrested without a major confrontation on September 18, 1975, ending one of the most widely publicized manhunts in the United States.

Hearst's subsequent trial centered heavily on whether she had willingly participated in the SLA's crimes or had acted under coercion after months of captivity, threats and abuse. Her defense maintained that she had been subjected to extreme psychological pressure, while prosecutors argued that her conduct demonstrated voluntary participation. A jury convicted her of bank robbery in March 1976, and she ultimately received a seven-year prison sentence. President Jimmy Carter commuted that sentence in 1979 after she had served roughly two years, allowing her to leave prison, and President Bill Clinton granted her a full pardon in 2001. Decades later, the question of exactly how captivity, fear and coercive control affected Hearst's actions has continued to make the case the subject of books, documentaries and debate.

On September 18, 1987, workers at a scrapyard in Goiânia, Brazil, dismantled part of an abandoned medical radiotherapy machine, exposing a capsule containing highly radioactive cesium-137. The machine had once been used for cancer treatment at the Goiânia Institute of Radiotherapy, but it was left behind when the institute relocated. Two men searching the abandoned premises for material they could sell as scrap removed the equipment and eventually sold components to a local scrapyard. Nobody involved realized that the apparently unwanted machinery contained a powerful radioactive source capable of causing severe injury and death.

When the protective capsule was broken open, those handling it discovered a blue-glowing material that fascinated rather than frightened them. Pieces of the cesium chloride were shared among relatives, friends and neighbors, spreading radioactive contamination through homes and across the community. Within days, people began suffering symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and skin injuries, but the cause was initially unclear. The wife of the scrapyard owner became suspicious that the strange material was responsible and took remnants of it to health authorities. The discovery triggered a massive emergency response in which more than 100,000 people were examined for possible contamination. Hundreds were found to have radioactive contamination, dozens required closer medical attention, and four people ultimately died from radiation exposure, including a young girl.

The cleanup was enormous for an accident involving such a physically small quantity of radioactive material. Contaminated houses and other structures were demolished, belongings were destroyed, soil was removed, and thousands of tons of radioactive waste eventually had to be isolated and stored. Residents of Goiânia also faced considerable fear and discrimination as people elsewhere avoided products and even individuals associated with the city despite posing no radiation danger themselves. The accident became an internationally important example of what can happen when radioactive medical equipment is abandoned without adequate security or regulatory control, and Brazil subsequently strengthened its oversight of radioactive sources. Goiânia demonstrated with tragic clarity that something does not have to look dangerous—or even be particularly large—to be extraordinarily hazardous.

On September 18, 1987, Fatal Attraction opened widely in American theaters and rapidly became one of the year's biggest cinematic talking points. Directed by Adrian Lyne, the psychological thriller starred Michael Douglas as Dan Gallagher, a married New York attorney whose weekend affair with book editor Alex Forrest, played by Glenn Close, develops into an increasingly terrifying ordeal after he attempts to return to his family and ordinary life. Alex refuses to accept that the relationship is over, and her behavior escalates from persistent telephone calls and unexpected appearances to threats and violence. The movie's most notorious moment involves the unfortunate fate of the Gallagher family's pet rabbit, creating a scene so memorable that “bunny boiler” subsequently entered popular slang as a decidedly unflattering description of an obsessively possessive person.

The movie was adapted from screenwriter James Dearden's earlier short film Diversion and became far more than a conventional thriller. Audiences argued about Dan's infidelity, Alex's behavior, marriage, responsibility and whether the movie treated its characters fairly, while critics and scholars subsequently debated its portrayal of women, sexuality and family life. Whatever disagreements surrounded its themes, audiences certainly bought tickets: Fatal Attraction became one of the highest-grossing films of 1987. It also received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Lyne and Best Actress for Close. Douglas was already a major star through The Streets of San Francisco, Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, and later that same year he appeared as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, the performance that earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Close had already demonstrated her dramatic range in The World According to Garp, The Big Chill and The Natural, receiving supporting-actress Oscar nominations for all three, but Alex Forrest became one of her most famous and controversial roles. She continued with acclaimed performances in movies including Dangerous Liaisons, Reversal of Fortune and Albert Nobbs, while Lyne continued exploring relationships, desire and their consequences in films such as Indecent Proposal, Lolita, Unfaithful and, decades later, Deep Water. Fatal Attraction remained firmly embedded in popular culture long after its original theatrical run, inspiring parodies, references and continuing arguments about its characters and ending. Plenty of thrillers disappear once the credits roll; this one managed to leave audiences debating adultery, obsession and marital fidelity—and looking at the family rabbit with considerably more concern than before.

On September 19, 1893, Governor Lord Glasgow gave royal assent to New Zealand's Electoral Act, making New Zealand the first self-governing country in the world to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. The breakthrough followed years of determined campaigning led by suffrage advocates including Kate Sheppard and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Meetings, rallies and enormous petitions kept pressure on Parliament, with the petitions submitted in 1893 carrying nearly 32,000 signatures.

The victory was put into practice almost immediately. Despite having only about ten weeks to register, more than 109,000 women enrolled, and over 90,000 cast ballots in the general election on November 28, 1893. Women in many other democracies would wait considerably longer for comparable voting rights; the United States ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920, while Britain extended equal voting rights to women on the same terms as men in 1928.

On September 19, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev arrived in Los Angeles during his historic tour of the United States, and what might have been a routine diplomatic visit quickly became one of the Cold War's stranger episodes. At Twentieth Century Fox, Khrushchev attended a star-filled luncheon and watched filming of Can-Can, meeting Hollywood personalities including Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra. Studio president Spyros Skouras and Khrushchev also engaged in a spirited public exchange about capitalism, communism and the Soviet leader's famous prediction that the communist world would eventually "bury" capitalism.

Then came Disneyland. Khrushchev had hoped to visit the celebrated theme park, but Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker warned that he could not accept responsibility for the Soviet leader's safety there, particularly after a tomato had been thrown at Khrushchev's motorcade earlier in the day. The excursion was canceled, and Khrushchev was decidedly unimpressed. During his remarks at the studio, he sarcastically wondered whether Disneyland was suffering from an epidemic or had been taken over by gangsters, and asked what he was supposed to do if American authorities could not guarantee his safety. The Soviet premier never did get his day with Mickey Mouse.

The atmosphere deteriorated further that evening as Khrushchev angrily complained about his treatment and raised the specter of renewed Cold War tensions and the arms race. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko subsequently complained to American officials about security restrictions and what the Soviet delegation regarded as provocations during the visit. Khrushchev departed Los Angeles the following morning for San Francisco, where his reception proved considerably warmer. His thwarted Disneyland excursion nevertheless became one of the most memorable—and wonderfully bizarre—footnotes of his 1959 American tour.

On September 19, 1960, Chubby Checker reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “The Twist,” helping turn a rhythm-and-blues song into one of the biggest dance crazes in popular music history. Born Ernest Evans in South Carolina and raised in South Philadelphia, Checker was still a teenager when his talent for imitating performers such as Fats Domino caught the attention of people associated with American Bandstand host Dick Clark. His stage name played on Fats Domino's name, while his breakthrough song had originated with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, whose version of “The Twist” had already enjoyed success on the R&B and pop charts. Checker's recording, coupled with television exposure, brought the song—and its wonderfully uncomplicated hip-swiveling dance—to a huge national audience.

Part of the dance's appeal was that almost anyone could attempt it without lessons, elaborate footwork or even a partner. Checker famously described the basic idea as though someone were putting out a cigarette with one foot while drying their back with a towel. Teenagers embraced it first, but adults and celebrities soon joined the twisting at fashionable nightclubs, and the phenomenon became much more than another fleeting teenage craze. Most remarkably, Checker's recording returned to No. 1 in January 1962, giving “The Twist” two separate stays at the top of the Hot 100—an extraordinary achievement for the same recording.

Checker became permanently associated with the dance, following his breakthrough with records including “Let's Twist Again” and appearing in films built around the craze. More importantly, “The Twist” helped establish the dance-craze single as a recurring feature of popular music, paving the way for countless songs accompanied by instructions—or at least a strong suggestion that listeners get out of their chairs. Its cultural importance was formally recognized when the Library of Congress added Checker's recording to the National Recording Registry in 2013, and in 2018 it was among the first group of singles honored by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Six decades later, the instructions remain reassuringly simple: plant your feet, move your hips, and try not to knock over the furniture.

On September 19, 1995, The New York Times and The Washington Post published a lengthy manifesto written by the person the FBI had been pursuing as the Unabomber. The decision followed a demand from the bomber, who said he would stop his attacks if his approximately 35,000-word essay was published by a major newspaper. By then, a bombing campaign stretching back to 1978 had killed three people and injured 23 others. The attacks had targeted people associated with universities, airlines, computers and other areas the bomber connected with modern technology and industrial society.

Publication produced the breakthrough investigators had been unable to achieve through years of forensic work. David Kaczynski read the manifesto and noticed similarities between its language and ideas and those expressed by his older brother, Theodore Kaczynski, a Harvard graduate and former mathematics professor who had abandoned academic life and was living in a small cabin near Lincoln, Montana. David and his wife, Linda Patrik, ultimately brought their suspicions to authorities. Investigators compared the manifesto with Ted Kaczynski's earlier writings, and the evidence helped lead the FBI to his Montana cabin. Kaczynski was arrested there on April 3, 1996, ending one of the longest and most expensive investigations in FBI history.

In 1998, Kaczynski pleaded guilty to federal charges connected with the bombings and received multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole. He remained in federal custody for the rest of his life and died on June 10, 2023, at a federal medical center in North Carolina. His death was ruled a suicide. The unusual decision to publish his manifesto remains an important part of the case: the words intended to spread Kaczynski's ideology instead provided the clue that allowed a member of his own family to recognize him and helped investigators finally identify the Unabomber.