This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
September 30 is the 273rd day of the year (274th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 92 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1791, The Magic Flute, Die Zauberflote, an opera in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, premiered in Vienna at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart conducted and Schikaneder played Papageno, while the role of the Queen of the Night was sung by Mozart’s sister-in-law Josepha Hofer. This was Mozart’s last opera.
489 – Battle of Verona: The Ostrogoths under king Theoderic the Great defeat the forces of Odoacer for the second time at Verona (Northern Italy).
737 – Battle of the Baggage: Turgesh drive back an Umayyad invasion of Khuttal, follow them south of the Oxus and capture their baggage train.
1399 – Henry IV is proclaimed King of England.
1744 – France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Battle of Madonna dell’Olmo.
1791 – The Magic Flute, the last opera composed by Mozart, receives its premiere performance at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, Austria.
1791 – The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre and Jerome Petion as incorruptible patriots.
1813 – Battle of Barbula: Simon Bolivar defeats Santiago Bobadilla.
1860 – Britain’s first tram service begins in Birkenhead, Merseyside.
1882 – The world’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States.
1888 – Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.
1895 – Madagascar becomes a French protectorate.
1901 – Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner.
1903 – The new Gresham’s School is officially opened by Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood.
1906 – The Real Academia Galega, Galician language’s biggest linguistic authority, starts working in Havana.
1927 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.
1931 – Start of “Die Voortrekkers” youth movement for Afrikaners in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
1935 – The Hoover Dam, astride the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated.
1938 – At 2:00 am, Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
1938 – The League of Nations unanimously outlaws “intentional bombings of civilian populations”.
1939 – General Wladyslaw Sikorski becomes commander-in-chief of the Polish Government in exile.
1941 – World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C complete Babi Yar massacre.
1945 – The Bourne End rail crash, in Hertfordshire, England, kills 43
1947 – The Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Yemen join the United Nations.
1947 – The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.
1949 – The Berlin Airlift ends.
1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear reactor powered vessel.
1955 – Film icon James Dean dies in a road accident aged 24.
1962 – Mexican-American labor leader Cesar Chavez founds the United Farm Workers.
1962 – James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation.
1965 – General Suharto rises to power after an alleged coup by the Communist Party of Indonesia. In response, Suharto and his army massacre over a million Indonesians suspected of being communists.
1965 The Lockheed L-100, the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules, was introduced.
1966 – The British protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana. Seretse Khama takes office as the first President.
1967 – BBC Radio 1 is launched and Tony Blackburn presents its first show; the BBC’s other national radio stations also adopt numeric names.
1968 – The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public for the first time at the Boeing Everett Factory.
1970 – Jordan makes a deal with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the release of the remaining hostages from the Dawson’s Field hijackings.
1972 – Roberto Clemente records his 3,000th and final hit of his career.
1975 – The Hughes (later McDonnell-Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight.
1977 – Because of US budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, the Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down.
1977 – Philippine political prisoners, Eugenio Lopez, Jr. and Sergio Osmena III escape from Fort Bonifacio Maximum Security Prison in the Philippines.
1979 – The Hong Kong MTR commences service with the opening of its Modified Initial System (aka. Kwun Tong Line).
1980 – Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.
1982 – Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six people in the Chicago area. Seven are killed in all.
1986 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy.
1989 – Foreign Minister of West Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s speech from the balcony of the German embassy in Prague.
1990 – The Dalai Lama unveils the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa.
1990 – The Chicago White Sox defeat the Seattle Mariners 2-1 at the final game at Comiskey Park.
1991 – President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is forced from office.
1993 – An earthquake hits India’s Latur and Osmanabad district of Marathwada (Aurangabad division) in Maharashtra state leaving tens of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.
1994 – Aldwych tube station (originally Strand Station) of the London Underground closes after eighty-eight years of service.
1999 – Japan’s worst nuclear accident at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tokai-mura, northeast of Tokyo.
2004 – The first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat are taken 600 miles south of Tokyo.
2004 – The AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile for the F-14 Tomcat, is retired from service. Almost two years later, the Tomcat is retired.
2005 – The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
2006 – the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Constitutional Act that proclaimed the new Constitution of Serbia.
2009 – The 2009 Sumatra earthquakes occur, killing over 1,115 people.
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