September 26
Activity of the day
Today is . . .
- European Day of Languages
- Dominion Day in New Zealand
- Feast day of Saints Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers, and patron saints of chemists, doctors, hairdressers and surgeons
- Feast Day of St John the Apostle, patron saint of publishers and writers
On this day . . .
- First recorded cremation in Britain (1769)
- Emile Berliner patents the first gramophone (1887)
- New Zealand becomes a Dominion (1907)
- The liner Queen Mary is launched at Clydebank, Scotland (1934)
- Sugar rationing in Britain comes to an end (1953)
- Frozen Birdseye fish fingers first go on sale in Britain (1955)
- The first performance of West Side Story takes place in New York (1957)
- First televised debate between presidential candidates takes place in Chicago between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy (1960)
- Bob Dylan makes his debut in New York’s Greenwich Village (1961)
- The album Abbey Road by the Beatles is released (1969)
- Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic (1973)
- Canadian athlete Ben Johnson is stripped of his Olympic gold medal after failing a drugs test (1988)
- The Motion Picture Association of America creates a new rating, NC-17, to stop people under 17 from seeing certain films (1990)
- Earthquakes in Italy damage works of art (1997)
Births
- Theodore Géricault, French artist (1791)
- T S Eliot, American -born British poet and playwright (1888)
- George Raft, American actor (1895)
- George Gershwin, American composer (1898)
- Bryan Ferry, English singer (1945)
- Olivia Newton-John, English singer (1948)
- Will Self, English author (1961)
- Serena Williams, American tennis player (1981)
Deaths
- Daniel Boone, US frontiersman (1820)
- Levi Strauss, American clothing manufacturer (1902)
- Bessie Smith, American blues singer (1937)
- Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer (1945)
- Anna Magnani, Italian actress (1973)
- Paquirri, Spanish bullfighter (1984)
- Robert Palmer, English singer (2003)
- Paul Newman, American actor (2008)