Today in History
| (1802) Newspaper alleges US president has an illicit relationship | |
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Virginia’s Richmond Recorder newspaper prints a scandalous story regarding President Thomas Jefferson and a woman whom he “kept, as his concubine,” asserting that she is “one of his own slaves.” The truth of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings will be investigated centuries later via DNA testing.. |
Sarah “Sally” Hemings was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by President Thomas Jefferson. She is believed to have had a long-term relationship and six children of record with him, of whom four survived to adulthood; and were given freedom by Jefferson. Hemings was the youngest of six siblings by the widowed planter John Wayles and his mixed-race slave Betty Hemings; Sally and her siblings were three-quarters European and half-siblings of Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Skelton. |
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| (1859) The sun spits out a solar superstorm | |
| A coronal mass ejection is released from the sun and impacts the earth’s atmosphere with a brilliant “white light flare,” as described by English astronomer Richard C. Carrington, forming fantastical auroras that are said to have been bright enough to read by at night, and packing enough interference to cripple the globe’s telegraph systems. . |  |
The Solar storm of 1859—known as the Carrington Event—was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection hit Earth’s magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1–2, 1859. The associated “white light flare” in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by English astronomers Richard C. Carrington (1826–1875) and Richard Hodgson (1804–1872). Studies have shown that a solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would likely cause more widespread problems for a modern and technology-dependent society. The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth’s orbit without striking the planet. |
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| (1902) Paris moviegoers head to the moon and back | |
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Jules Verne novels have inspired a new moving picture from French artist Georges Méliès, a fanciful frolic chronicling a lunar landing and a meeting with inhabitants of the moon. ‘A Trip to the Moon’ will open just over a month later in the US and eventually will be called the first science-fiction film.. |
A group of astronomers studies the way to travel to the moon. When they conclude their project, the president selects five other astronomers to travel with him. They embark in a shell and they are shot from a giant cannon to the moon. When they land, they seek shelter in a cave to protect from the snow. They meet the Selenites, the alien inhabitants of the moon, and they are destroyed by the astronomers that find that a strong hit make them explode. However, they arrive in large number and the astronomers are captured by the Selenites. But one astronomer hits their king that explodes and they run to the capsule pursued by the alien. They drop the capsule that falls through the space and reach the ocean. Then they are rescued by a steamer that brings the team safe and sound ashore. |
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| (1939) History’s most destructive war dawns with a massive invasion | |
| In WWII’s opening salvo, Hitler’s armed forces descend on Poland with blitzkrieg force and, getting assistance from the Soviet Union, will decimate the country’s archaic military, controlling the nation within a month. Per their Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the USSR will divide up the conquered territory.. |  |
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, or the 1939 Defensive War in Poland, and alternatively the Poland Campaign or Fall Weiss in Germany, was a joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Free City of Danzig, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent, that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, while the Soviet invasion commenced on 17 September following the Molotov-Tōgō agreement that terminated the Russian and Japanese hostilities in the east on 16 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. |
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