● Sept 12 in History
1609 — English explorer Henry Hudson sails the Halve Maen from Upper New York Bay into the river that later takes his name. Sailing for the Dutch East India Company, Hudson is famous for his search of the Northwest Passage, a water route linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
1683 — Forces of the Holy Roman Empire, led by the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth defeat the Ottoman Turks at Kahlenberg Mountain in the Battle of Vienna. It marks the first Commonwealth/Holy Roman Empire military co-operation against the Ottoman Empire. 1888 — Maurice Chevalier, singer/composer (“Thank Heaven for Little Girls”) and actor (“Gigi”, “Can-Can”, “Fanny”), is born in Paris, France.
1890 — Salisbury, Rhodesia, is founded as a fort by the Pioneer Column, a military volunteer force of settlers organised by Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company. They name it after the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, then-prime minister of the UK. 1933 — Hungary-born physicist Leó Szilárd, waiting (on foot) at a red light in London, conceives the idea of nuclear chain reaction. He becomes a major figure in the US’s Manhattan Project (1942-46) for the development of the world’s first atomic weapon. 1940 — The Lascaux Caves, with their prehistoric wall paintings, are discovered near the village of Montignac in southwestern France. The entrance is discovered by Marcel Ravidat, 18, when his dog, Robot, falls in a hole. Ravidat returns with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel and Simon Coencas. They enter the cave through a 15m-deep shaft they believe might be a legendary secret passage to the nearby Lascaux Manor. Instead, they discover the 17,000-year-old paintings.
1953 — US senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 36, marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, 24, at St Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island.
1959 — NBC launches “Bonanza” (starring Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Pernell Roberts and Dan Blocker), the first colour Western on TV. It runs for 14 seasons (431 episodes) to January 16 1973.
2011 — The memorial of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in NYC — commemorating the September 11 2001 attack on the US (2,977 killed) and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (six killed) — is opened. The museum is opened on May 15 2014. 2014 — A six-storey building serving as a shopping mall and guesthouse collapses at the sprawling campus of televangelist TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations on the outskirts of Lagos in Nigeria, killing 85 South Africans out of a death toll of 116. Four days later, a woman is saved from the rubble.