What happened today, September 19, in Greece and the world.
335: Dalmatius is raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle, Emperor Constantine I.
634: Arabs led by Khalid ibn Walid capture Damascus from the Byzantine Empire.
1356: At the Battle of Poitiers, English forces led by Edward the Black Prince defeat the French and capture King John II of France.
1777: During the American Revolution, the British defeat the Americans at the First Battle of Saratoga.
1848: Bond and Leisel discover Saturn’s moon Hyperion.
1852: In Naples, Annibale de Gasparis discovers the asteroid “20 Marseille”.
1870: The siege of Paris by the Prussian forces of William I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck begins. The city will fall on the 15th of next January.
1876: The first vacuum cleaner for large carpets and rugs is invented in the USA by Melville Bissell.
1888: The first international women’s beauty contest (beauty pageant) is held in Spa, Belgium. First prize goes to 18-year-old Bertha Sucaret from Guatemala.
1931: The stock market panic in America and Europe also affects Greece. There is a devaluation of values and the bankruptcy of stockbrokers in Athens and Thessaloniki, while the Stock Exchange closes.
1940: A Greek prehistoric lake city is discovered, dating back to an era older than 2000 BC. in the lake of Kastoria.
1952: The US bans Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England.
1955: Argentina’s president, Juan Peron, is overthrown by a military coup.
1957: The US conducts its first underground nuclear test.
1957: For the first time, during the Prime Ministership of Constantinos Karamanlis, the issue of transferring the Athens International Airport from Elliniko is raised. Finally, the International Airport of Athens “Eleftherios Venizelos” in Spata started its operation on March 29, 2001. It was named in honor of the politician Eleftherios Venizelos, who as Prime Minister of Greece established a Ministry of Aviation and made systematic efforts to organize Civil Aviation.
1961: The Center Union is founded with George Papandreou as its leader. The governing committee includes: Georgios Athanasiadis – Novas, Pausanias Katsotas, Stavros Kostopoulos, Alexandros Baltatzis, Savvas Papapolitis, Stefanos Stephanopoulos and Ilias Tsirimokos.
1968: In Mexico, Police storm the University of Mexico City to end student unrest, resulting in the deaths of 18 students.
1970: In Genoa, Italy, student Kostas Georgakis sets himself on fire, shouting “Long live free Greece”, in protest of the military regime in Greece.
1982: In Sweden, the Social Democrats under Olof Palme win a big victory in the parliamentary elections.
1985: Kdevastating earthquake in Mexico, measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale, causes the death of at least 4,200 people.
1990: The last page of the newspaper “The First” is published.
1992: The “tsar of the ethers”, Sergey Bubka, sets a new pole vault world record with 6.13m in Tokyo. It will be taken down on September 19, 2020 (almost 28 years later) by Mondo Duplantis.
1994: “The extension of Greece’s territorial waters by 12 nautical miles is equivalent to a cause of war,” emphasizes Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mumtaz Soysal.
1995: Croatia decides to stop the attacks against the Serbs and agrees with Bosnia that through political dialogue the territorial issue will be settled.
2000: Weightlifting gives Greece another medal at the Sydney Olympics, with Ioanna Hatziioannou taking third place in the 63kg category, lifting 222.5kg.
2002: There is a coup attempt in the Ivory Coast, while President Laurent Bagbo is away in Italy. During the clashes, dozens of people are killed, among them the former dictator Robert Guay.
2006: A coup takes place in Thailand. General Sodi Bunjaratglin is in power.
2020: A 1634 edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen, the last play written by English playwright William Shakespeare, is discovered in the library of the Royal Scots College in Salamanca, Spain. It is believed to be the oldest copy of any of his works in the country.
2020: Chinese tech company ByteDance announces a proposed joint deal with US companies Oracle and Walmart to continue operating video-sharing social network service TikTok in the United States under the Tiktok Global brand. US President Donald Trump acknowledges the proposal, having threatened to ban the service on suspicion of Chinese espionage if ByteDance did not reach a deal with a US company.
2020: A rare tropical-like Mediterranean cyclone (medicane), with winds of up to 120 km/h, kills three people as it passes over Greece towards the island of Crete. About 5,000 houses in Karditsa are affected by floods and strong winds. One person is still missing.
2020: Former UK spy Fraser Cameron is reportedly under investigation by Belgian authorities for allegedly selling sensitive information to Chinese spies posing as journalists.
2020: United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declares that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is no longer valid. He also warns that the United States “is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences” on other countries that do not implement the sanctions. Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia are reacting to the retroactive sanctions.
2021: The Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, Spain, erupts for the first time in fifty years. A few hours later, the first precautionary evacuations of people with reduced mobility from nearby towns take place after the declaration of a pre-explosion situation.
2021: The United States closes the Mexico-US border near Del Rio, Texas after thousands of Haitian migrants arrive at the international bridge near the city. The US will also begin flying migrants back to Haiti.
Births
86 – Antoninus the Pious, Roman emperor
866 – Leo VI, Byzantine emperor
1551 – Henry III, King of France
1560 – Thomas Cavendish, English navigator
1898 – Giuseppe Saragat, Italian politician
1899 – Ignazio Buttitta, Italian poet
1911 – William Golding, English author
1919 – Mary Midgley, American philosopher
1921 – Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and philosopher
1922 – Emil Zatopek, Czech runner
1926 – Masatoshi Koshiba, Japanese physicist
1930- Antonio Margheriti, Italian filmmaker
1931-Jean-Claude Carriere, French actor and screenwriter
1934 – Brian Epstein, English manager
1934 – Miltos Papapostolou, Greek football player and coach
1936 – Al Erter, American discus thrower
1940 – Paul Williams, American composer
1948 – Jeremy Irons, English actor
1954 – Eleni Vitali, singer
1958- Lita Ford, singer
1958 – Azuma Nelson, Ghanaian boxer
1959 – Rene Marsiglia, French football player and coach
1961 – George Christianakis, Greek composer
1963- David Seaman, English goalkeeper
1965 – Tsering Thombhai, Prime Minister of Bhutan
1967 – Alexander Karelin, Russian wrestler
1969 – Alcinoos Ioannidis, Cypriot singer and songwriter
1973 – Cristiano da Mata, Brazilian racing car driver
1974 – Victoria Silvstedt, Swedish actress, singer and model
1974 – Jimmy Fallon, American actor
1976 – Raja Bell, American basketball player
1977 – Ryan Dashick, American drummer
1978 – Michele Alves, Brazilian model
1979 – Danielle Brent, British actress
1979 – Noemi Lenoir, French model and actress
1981 – Damiano Cunego, Italian cyclist
1982 – Nicole Voss, American model
1982 – Lena Daniilidou, Greek player
1984 – Kevin Zegers, Canadian actor
1990-Savvas Gentsoglou, football player
Deaths
690 – Saint Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury
961 – Helen Lekapini, Byzantine empress
1710 – Ole Remer, Danish astronomer
1843 – Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis, French mathematician and engineer
1881 – James Garfield, 20th US president
1935 – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian scientist
1949 – Nikos Skalkotas, Greek composer
1968- Chester Carlson, American inventor
1970 – Kostas Georgakis, Greek fighter
1971 – William Albright, American biblical archaeologist
1983 – Angel Lambruna, Argentine soccer player and coach
1985 – Italo Calvino, Italian journalist and writer
1987 – Einar Gerhardsen, Norwegian politician
1990 – Hermes Pan, American dancer and choreographer
1994 – Alexis Akrithakis, Greek painter
1994 – Franco Moschino, Italian fashion designer
2002 – Kita Broadhead, American painter
2002 – Robert Gueye, dictator of Ivory Coast
2003 – Kenneth Hagin, American priest
2016 – Voula Damianakou, Greek writer
2019 – Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisian soldier, politician, 2nd president of Tunisia
2020 – John Turner, Canadian politician, 17th Prime Minister of Canada
2021 – Jimmy Greaves, English footballer, world champion (World Cup 1966)
