DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Saturday, Sept. 25, the 268th day of 2021. There are 97 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1513: Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the Pacific Ocean.
1789: The first United States Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.)
1890: President Benjamin Harrison signed a measure establishing Sequoia National Park.
1911: Ground was broken for Boston’s Fenway Park.
1919: President Woodrow Wilson collapsed after a speech in Pueblo, Colo., during a national speaking tour in support of the Treaty of Versailles.
1956: The first trans-atlantic telephone cable officially went into service with a three-way ceremonial call between New York, Ottawa and London.
1957: Nine Black students who’d been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division.
1978: 144 people were killed when a Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 727 and a private plane collided over San Diego.
1981: Sandra Day O’connor was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court.
1992: NASA’S Mars Observer blasted off on a $980 million mission to the red planet (the probe disappeared just before entering Martian orbit in August 1993).
1991: Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie died in Lyon, France, at age 77.
2015: House Speaker John Boehner abruptly announced his resignation.
2018: Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison for drugging and molesting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home. (After nearly three years in prison, Cosby went free in June 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction.)
Newswoman Barbara Walters is 92. Singer Ian Tyson of Ian and Sylvia is 88. Polka band leader Jimmy Sturr is 79. Actor Josh Taylor (“Days of Our Lives,” “Valerie’s Family”) is 78. Actor Robert Walden (“Lou Grant”) is 78. Actor Michael Douglas is 77. Model Cheryl Tiegs is 74. Actor Mimi Kennedy (“Dharma and Greg”) is 73. Actor Anson Williams (“Happy Days”) is 72. Actor
Mark Hamill is 70. Actor Colin Friels is 69. Actor Michael Madsen is 63. Actor Heather Locklear is 60. Actor Aida Turturro (“The Sopranos”) is 59. Actor
Tate Donovan (“The O.C.”) is 58. TV personality Keely Shaye Smith (“Unsolved Mysteries”) is 58. Actor Maria Doyle Kennedy (“Orphan Black,” “The Tudors”) is 57. Actor Jason Flemyng (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”) is 55. Actorsinger Will Smith is 53. Actor Hal Sparks (“Queer as Folk”) is 52. Actor
Catherine Zeta-jones is 52. Actor
Bridgette Wilson-sampras (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”) is 48. Actor Clea Duvall (“Heroes”) is 44. Actor
Robbie Jones (“One Tree Hill”) is 44.