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 23, 1846, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle observed Neptune from the Berlin Observatory, confirming the existence of a planet whose location had essentially been predicted with mathematics before it was seen through a telescope. French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier had studied irregularities in the orbit of Uranus and concluded that the gravitational influence of an undiscovered planet could explain them. After calculating where the mysterious world should appear in the night sky, Le Verrier sent his prediction to Galle in Berlin.

Galle received Le Verrier's calculations on September 23 and, working with astronomer Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, began searching that same evening. They found an object extremely close to the predicted position, and subsequent observations showing its movement against the background stars confirmed that it was a planet. The discovery became one of astronomy's great demonstrations of mathematical prediction: scientists had effectively worked out where a previously unknown planet ought to be and then pointed a telescope toward that part of the heavens and found it.

Named Neptune after the Roman god of the sea, the distant blue world is the eighth planet from the Sun and is roughly four times Earth's diameter. Neptune takes about 165 Earth years to complete one orbit and possesses a system of rings and numerous moons, the largest of which is Triton. Humanity finally obtained a close look at the planet in 1989 when NASA's Voyager 2 flew past Neptune, becoming the first — and so far only — spacecraft to visit the distant planet.

On September 23, 1875, the teenager who would become infamous as Billy the Kid was arrested for the first time in Silver City, New Mexico Territory, after becoming involved in the theft of clothing from a Chinese laundry. He was jailed but soon escaped, beginning a pattern of running from the law that would follow him for the remainder of his short life. Born William Henry McCarty, probably in New York around 1859, he also used the names Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney. Following his mother's death in 1874, the young McCarty increasingly drifted into theft and other criminal activity as he moved through the American Southwest.

After spending time in Arizona, where he became involved in horse theft and killed a man during an altercation, McCarty returned to New Mexico and became caught up in the violent Lincoln County War of 1878. He rode with a group known as the Regulators during the conflict between rival commercial and ranching interests and participated in deadly confrontations that helped establish his reputation as a gunman. Popular legend later credited Billy the Kid with killing 21 men — supposedly one for each year of his life — but historians generally consider that figure greatly exaggerated. Eventually captured and convicted of murdering Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady, Billy was sentenced to hang. In April 1881, however, he made a spectacular escape from the Lincoln County courthouse, killing deputies James Bell and Robert Olinger before fleeing once again.

The escape did not buy him much time. Sheriff Pat Garrett continued searching for Billy and tracked him to Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, where Garrett shot and killed him on July 14, 1881. Billy the Kid's death did little to end his story. Newspapers, dime novels and later books, songs, television programs and movies transformed the young outlaw into one of the enduring figures of Old West folklore, frequently blurring the distinction between the historical William McCarty and the legendary Billy the Kid. Fort Sumner remains closely associated with that legend, with visitors still coming to see sites connected with the outlaw whose remarkable notoriety began, rather humbly, with some stolen laundry.

On September 23, 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid premiered in New York City, pairing Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy with Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid in what became one of Hollywood's most beloved Westerns. Directed by George Roy Hill from a screenplay by William Goldman, the film took the familiar outlaw story and gave it a distinctly modern personality, mixing gunfights and robberies with humor, friendship and two leading men whose easy chemistry became the heart of the picture. Audiences loved it, and the film became a major box-office success. It received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won four Oscars: Goldman's screenplay, Conrad Hall's cinematography, Burt Bacharach's original score, and the Bacharach-Hal David song “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head.”

Newman was already firmly established as one of America's leading actors, with acclaimed performances in films including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud and Cool Hand Luke. Redford, meanwhile, had established himself on Broadway and was emerging as a major film star; Sundance became one of the roles that cemented that status. The partnership worked so well that Newman and Redford reunited with director George Roy Hill for 1973's The Sting, another enormous success that won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Newman continued an extraordinary screen career that eventually brought him the competitive Best Actor Oscar for The Color of Money, while Redford combined acting with directing, winning the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1980 directorial debut, Ordinary People.

Both men went on to create bodies of work stretching far beyond their famous partnership, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid retained a special place in popular culture. Its wisecracking dialogue, bicycle sequence, Burt Bacharach score and famous final freeze-frame helped make it a Western unlike most that had preceded it. Newman and Redford made their doomed outlaws charming enough that generations of viewers found themselves hoping history might somehow reconsider the ending. It didn't — but more than half a century later, Butch and Sundance are still riding together.

On September 24, 1948, Soichiro Honda established the Honda Motor Company in Hamamatsu, Japan, beginning a business that would grow from modest motorcycle production into one of the world's best-known manufacturers. Honda's early postwar experiments were hardly a straight road to success. After taking over a damaged former factory in 1946, he explored ideas ranging from weaving machinery and glass production to bamboo roofing before discovering a supply of surplus two-stroke engines. With transportation desperately needed in postwar Japan, Honda attached the little engines to bicycles and found an eager market. When the surplus motors ran out, he began producing his own, leading to the A-Type motorized bicycle in 1947 and, after incorporation, the more advanced D-Type motorcycle in 1949.

Motorcycles soon transformed Honda from a small Japanese manufacturer into an international company. The Super Cub, introduced in 1958, became particularly important, combining simplicity, reliability and economical operation in a machine designed to appeal well beyond traditional motorcycle enthusiasts. Honda entered the American market in 1959, and during the following decade its motorcycles became familiar around the world. The company also began manufacturing automobiles in the 1960s, but its major automotive breakthrough came with the Civic, introduced in the early 1970s. Its fuel-efficient CVCC engine was capable of meeting stringent U.S. emissions requirements without a catalytic converter, making the Civic particularly attractive during an era of rising fuel prices. The larger Accord followed in 1976 and became another major success, eventually becoming one of America's best-selling automobiles.

Honda remained closely associated with the company as it expanded from improvised motorized bicycles to motorcycles, automobiles and international motorsport. Known as an engineer and enthusiastic racer as much as a businessman, he encouraged experimentation and technological development rather than simply copying established manufacturers. Soichiro Honda was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1989 and died in 1991, leaving behind a company whose origins could scarcely have been more humble: a battered factory, some discarded engines and one mechanically minded dreamer determined to find something useful to build.

On September 24, 1968, CBS introduced American viewers to 60 Minutes, an experimental news program created by producer Don Hewitt and originally presented by Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner. Hewitt conceived the program as a television equivalent of a magazine, combining several shorter reports within a single broadcast rather than devoting an entire hour to one documentary subject. The premiere included material from the 1968 presidential campaign as well as interviews, commentary and other features, establishing the mixture of serious reporting and lighter material that would become the program's trademark. Initially broadcast every other Tuesday, 60 Minutes later moved through several time slots before settling into its familiar Sunday evening home in 1975.

As the program developed, investigative reporting and lengthy interviews became central to its identity. Its journalists examined subjects ranging from Watergate and the Vietnam War to corporate misconduct, government controversies and international affairs. The program also introduced recurring features such as “Point/Counterpoint,” which began in 1971 and presented opposing political viewpoints. Over the decades its roster of correspondents has included Wallace, Reasoner, Morley Safer, Dan Rather, Ed Bradley, Diane Sawyer, Steve Kroft, Lesley Stahl and others. Its distinctive ticking stopwatch eventually became one of the most recognizable opening images in American television—although, surprisingly, it was absent from that first broadcast.

What began as an uncertain experiment became one of television's most enduring institutions. 60 Minutes eventually reached the top of the Nielsen ratings and accumulated numerous honors for its journalism; the Peabody Awards gave the program an Institutional Award in 2017 after it had already received more than 20 Peabodys for individual work. More than half a century after Wallace and Reasoner introduced viewers to what they called a magazine for television, 60 Minutes remains on the CBS schedule and holds the distinction of being the longest continuously running program in American network prime time.

On September 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened to the public on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., bringing to completion an effort whose roots stretched back more than a century. Calls for a national institution recognizing African American history and achievement can be traced to 1915, and a presidential commission was established in 1929, but the project repeatedly stalled. Decades later, Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis became one of its most persistent congressional advocates. Congress finally authorized the Smithsonian museum in 2003, with President George W. Bush signing the legislation that December. A site near the Washington Monument was selected in 2006, construction began after a 2012 groundbreaking, and the distinctive 400,000-square-foot building was designed by the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup team. Its exterior “Corona,” consisting of thousands of bronze-colored cast-aluminum panels, gives the museum an appearance unlike anything else along the Mall.

The dedication brought together thousands of spectators along with President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, Congressman Lewis, Chief Justice John Roberts, Smithsonian officials and other guests. Following Obama's remarks, the museum was officially opened by ringing the Freedom Bell, a 500-pound bell from the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the country's oldest African American Baptist congregations. Obama and the First Lady were joined at the bell by four generations of the Bonner family, including Ruth Bonner, whose father had been born into slavery. Bells then sounded elsewhere across Washington to mark the occasion.

When its doors opened that afternoon, visitors entered a museum devoted exclusively to documenting African American life, history and culture, with exhibitions exploring slavery and freedom, segregation and the civil rights movement, military service, sports, music, visual arts and contemporary American life. The Smithsonian had started the project in 2003 without a building, a site or even an artifact collection; by opening day, more than 3,000 objects were on display and tens of thousands more had been collected. Public response was immediate: by the museum's first anniversary, nearly three million people had visited. What had spent generations existing largely as an idea had finally become a permanent part of the Smithsonian—and of the National Mall itself.