This day in history

Today is Friday, Sept. 22, the 265th day of 2023. There are 100 days left in the year.

Birthdays: Dancer/choreographer/singer Toni Basil is 80. Actor Paul Le Mat is 78. Musician King Sunny Adé is 77. Captain Mark Phillips is 75. Rock singer David Coverdale (Deep Purple, Whitesnake) is 72. Actor Shari Belafonte is 69. Singer Debby Boone is 67. Singer-songwriter Nick Cave is 66. Actor Lynn Herring is 66. Classical crossover singer Andrea Bocelli is 65. Singer-musician Joan Jett is 65. Actor Scott Baio is 63. Actor Bonnie Hunt is 62. Rapper Mystikal is 53. Actor Mireille Enos is 48. Actor Daniella Alonso is 45. Actor Katie Lowes is 41. Actor Ukweli Roach is 37. Actor Tom Felton is 36. Actor Teyonah Parris is 36.

► In 1776, during the Revolutionary War, Captain Nathan Hale, 21, was hanged as a spy by the British in New York.

► In 1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in rebel states should be free as of Jan. 1, 1863 if the states did not end the fighting and rejoin the union.

► In 1911, pitcher Cy Young, 44, gained his 511th and final career victory as he hurled a 1-0 shutout for the Boston Rustlers against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field.

► In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb.

► In 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules prohibiting racial discrimination on interstate buses.

► In 1975, Sara Jane Moore attempted to shoot President Gerald R. Ford outside a San Francisco hotel, but missed.

► In 1980, the Persian Gulf conflict between Iran and Iraq erupted into full-scale war.

► In 1985, rock and country music artists participated in “Farm Aid,” a concert staged in Champaign, Ill., to help the nation’s farmers.

► In 1993, 47 people were killed when an Amtrak passenger train fell off a bridge and crashed into Big Bayou Canot near Mobile, Ala.

► In 1994, the situation comedy “Friends” debuted on NBCTV.

► In 1995, an AWACS plane carrying US and Canadian military personnel crashed on takeoff from Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska, killing all 24 people aboard.

► In 2014, the United States and five Arab nations launched airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria, sending waves of planes and Tomahawk cruise missiles against an array of targets.

► In 2020, US deaths from the coronavirus topped 200,000, by far the highest confirmed death toll from the virus in the world at that point, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.

► In 2017, as the scale of the damage from Hurricane Maria started to become clearer, Puerto Rican officials said they could not contact more than half of the communities in the US territory, where all power had been knocked out to the island’s 3.4 million people.