On This Day in History: September 9

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

September 9 is the 252nd day of the year (253rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 113 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1776, Congress renames the nation “United States of America”.

On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use.

In the Congressional declaration dated September 9, 1776, the delegates wrote, “That in all continental commissions, and other instruments, where, heretofore, the words ‘United Colonies’ have been used, the stile be altered for the future to the “United States.”

The Lee Resolution, also known as the resolution of independence, was an act of the Second Continental Congress declaring the United Colonies to be independent of the British Empire. First proposed on June 7, 1776, by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, after receiving instructions from the Virginia Convention and its President, Edmund Pendleton  (in fact Lee used, almost verbatim, the language from the instructions in his resolution). Voting on the resolution was delayed for several weeks while support for independence was consolidated. On June 11, a Committee of Five  was appointed to prepare a document to explain the reasons for independence. The resolution was finally approved on July 2, 1776, and news of its adoption was published that evening in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the next day in the Pennsylvania Gazette. The text of the document formally announcing this action, the United States Declaration of Independence, was approved on July 4.

 9 – Arminius’ alliance of six Germanic tribes ambushes and annihilates three Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

1000 – Battle of Svolder, Viking Age.

1379 – Treaty of Neuberg, splitting the Austrian Habsburg lands between the Habsburg Dukes Albert III and Leopold III.

1493 – Battle of Krbava field, a decisive defeat of Croats in Croatian struggle against the invasion by the Ottoman Empire.

1513 – James IV of Scotland is defeated and dies in the Battle of Flodden Field, ending Scotland’s involvement in the War of the League of Cambrai.

1543 – Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is crowned “Queen of Scots” in the central Scottish town of Stirling.

1739 – Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in Britain’s mainland North American colonies prior to the American Revolution, erupts near Charleston, South Carolina.

1776 – The Continental Congress officially names its new union of sovereign states the United States.

1791 – Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington.

1801 – Alexander I of Russia confirms the privileges of Baltic provinces.

1839 – John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph.

1850 – California is admitted as the thirty-first U.S. state.

1850 – The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas’s claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas’s pre-annexation debt.

1863 – American Civil War: The Union Army enters Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1886 – The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is finalized.

1914 – World War I: The creation of the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, the first fully mechanized unit in the British Army.

1922 – Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 ends with Turkish victory over the Greeks.

1923 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, founds the Republican People’s Party.

1924 – Hanapepe Massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii.

1926 – The U.S. National Broadcasting Company is formed.

1940 – George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer.

1942 – World War II: A Japanese floatplane drops an incendiary bomb on Oregon.

1943 – World War II: The Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy.

1944 – World War II: The Fatherland Front takes power in Bulgaria through a military coup in the capital and armed rebellion in the country. A new pro-Soviet government is established.

1945 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Japan formally surrenders to China.

1947 – First actual case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.

1948 – Republic Day of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.

1965 – The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established.

1965 – Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion ($10-12 billion in 2005 dollars) in damages, becoming the first hurricane to top $1 billion in unadjusted damages.

1966 – The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1970 – A British airliner is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Dawson’s Field in Jordan.

1971 – The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, which eventually results in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison.

1991 – Tajikstan gains independence from the Soviet Union.

1993 – The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state.

2001 – Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al Qaeda assassins who claimed to be Arab journalists wanting an interview.