James Marsden

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.