In a letter to his nephew, Lund Washington, plantation manager of Mount Vernon, General George Washington writes on September 30, 1776, of his displeasure with the undisciplined conduct and poor battlefield performance of the American militia. Washington blamed the Patriot reliance on the militia as the chief root of his problems in the devastating loss […]

The first volume of Louisa May Alcott’s book Little Women is published on September 30, 1868. The novel will become Alcott’s first bestseller and a beloved children’s classic. Like the fictional Jo March, Alcott was the second of four daughters. She was born in Pennsylvania but spent most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts, where […]

On September 30, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson gives a speech before Congress in support of guaranteeing women the right to vote. Although the House of Representatives had approved a 19th constitutional amendment giving women suffrage, the Senate had yet to vote on the measure. Wilson had actually maintained a somewhat lukewarm attitude toward women’s suffrage […]

On September 30, 1918, a combined Arab and Australian force arrives in Damascus, Syria, to spearhead its liberation from the Turks during World War I, before British troops arrive the following morning to seal the deal. An instrumental commander in the Allied campaign was T.E. Lawrence, a legendary British soldier known as Lawrence of Arabia. […]

On September 30, 1928, Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel, the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize-winning author of more than 50 books, including “Night,” an internationally acclaimed memoir based on his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, is born in Sighet, Transylvania (present-day Romania). In May 1944, the Nazis deported […]

On September 30, 1947, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 5-3, in Game 1 of the World Series—the first Fall Classic game broadcast on television. It is the second “Subway Series” between and Yankees and Dodgers and first World Series to involve a Black player. Jackie Robinson of the Dodgers broke Major League […]

After 15 months and more than 250,000 flights, the Berlin Airlift officially comes to an end. The airlift was one of the greatest logistical feats in modern history and was one of the crucial events of the early Cold War. In June 1948, the Soviet Union suddenly blocked all ground traffic into West Berlin, which […]

At 5:45 PM on September 30, 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean is killed in Cholame, California, when the Porsche he is driving hits a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection. Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” had been released at the time of his death (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” opened shortly […]