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 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States approved 12 proposed amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. The proposals were intended to address concerns that the new Constitution did not sufficiently protect individual liberties or restrict the power of the federal government. Ten of the amendments would eventually become known collectively as the Bill of Rights, protecting such fundamental freedoms as speech, religion, the press and peaceful assembly, while also establishing important protections involving criminal proceedings, the right to bear arms and powers reserved to the states or the people.

The amendments reflected ideas with deep roots in earlier declarations of individual rights, including the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and Virginia's Declaration of Rights, written principally by George Mason in 1776. Mason later attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787 but refused to sign the completed Constitution, in part because it contained no declaration specifically protecting individual freedoms. Similar objections emerged during the state ratification debates, and supporters of the Constitution agreed that amendments addressing those concerns would be considered once the new federal government began operating. James Madison subsequently introduced a series of proposed amendments in Congress, from which the final 12 were developed.

Virginia ratified 10 of the proposed amendments on December 15, 1791, becoming the 11th of the 14 states and providing the three-fourths majority required to add them to the Constitution. Those 10 amendments became the Bill of Rights. One of the two remaining proposals, concerning the size and apportionment of the House of Representatives, was never ratified. The other sought to prevent changes in congressional compensation from taking effect until after an intervening election. Remarkably, that proposal remained technically alive for more than two centuries before receiving enough state approvals in 1992 to become the 27th Amendment.

On September 25, 1970, ABC introduced American television audiences to The Partridge Family, placing the new musical sitcom immediately after The Brady Bunch on Friday evenings. The series came from Screen Gems, the production company that had already demonstrated the commercial possibilities of combining television and pop music with The Monkees. This time, the basic concept drew inspiration from the Cowsills, the real-life family singing group. The Cowsills themselves were considered for the project, but the arrangement fell apart when the producers wanted actress Shirley Jones rather than the family's own mother, Barbara Cowsill, to head the fictional group. Screen Gems instead assembled its own television family, casting Jones as widowed mother Shirley Partridge, David Cassidy as Keith and Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, Jeremy Gelbwaks and Suzanne Crough as the Partridge children.

The show's opening episode established a formula that neatly connected the television story with an actual recording business. The Partridge children persuade their mother to join their musical group, and their recording of "I Think I Love You" becomes a hit. Reality quickly followed the script: released as an actual single featuring Cassidy and Jones, "I Think I Love You" climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1970. Cassidy, who was Shirley Jones' stepson in real life, rapidly became a major teen idol as the television series generated records, merchandise, fan magazines and packed concert appearances.

Despite what viewers saw each week, the records were not created by the fictional family gathered around microphones in the Partridge garage. Much of the instrumental work was performed by accomplished Los Angeles session musicians, including members of the celebrated group of studio players commonly known as the Wrecking Crew, with Cassidy developing into the principal singing voice associated with the act alongside Jones. Songs including "I Woke Up in Love This Morning" extended the television family's recording success, while Cassidy established a separate career as a recording and concert performer. The illusion of the friendly musical family became remarkably convincing to some young viewers: Shirley Jones later recalled children turning up at her home hoping that the woman they knew as Mrs. Partridge might take them in. Television had apparently done its job a little too well.

On September 25, 1978, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 collided in midair with a Cessna 172 over San Diego, California, causing one of the deadliest aviation disasters in U.S. history at the time. The Boeing 727 was approaching San Diego's Lindbergh Field after a flight from Sacramento with a stop in Los Angeles, carrying 128 passengers and seven crew members. Meanwhile, the Cessna, occupied by student pilot David Lee Boswell and instructor Martin Kazy, had been conducting instrument-landing practice before departing the Lindbergh Field area for Montgomery Field.

The crew of Flight 182 had been advised of the Cessna's presence and initially reported seeing the smaller aircraft. As the 727 continued its approach, however, its pilots lost visual contact with the Cessna while air traffic controllers continued under the impression that the PSA crew was maintaining separation visually. At approximately 9 a.m., the descending Boeing 727 overtook and struck the Cessna. The collision severely damaged the jet's right wing and ruptured its fuel system, sending the aircraft toward the residential North Park neighborhood below. The Cessna, also critically damaged, fell nearby.

Flight 182 crashed into the neighborhood and exploded, destroying or damaging numerous homes and starting several fires. Everyone aboard both aircraft—135 people on the Boeing 727 and the two men in the Cessna—was killed, along with seven people on the ground, bringing the death toll to 144. The subsequent National Transportation Safety Board investigation examined failures involving visual separation, communication and air traffic procedures, and the catastrophe contributed to significant changes in aviation safety. Among the developments that followed were tighter rules governing aircraft operations around busy airports and, in the years ahead, greater use of technology designed to warn pilots when another aircraft poses a collision threat.

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.