September 30
Activity of the day
Today is . . .
- International Translation Day
- Independence Day in Botswana
- Feast Day of St Jerome, patron saint of librarians, students, and archaeologists
On this day . . .
- The first performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute takes place in Vienna (1791)
- Louisa Mary Alcott’s novel, Little Women, is published (1868)
- Jack the Ripper murders two more women in London’s East End (1888)
- Alexander Fleming announces his discovery of penicillin (1928)
- George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess is first performed (1935)
- Pinewood Studios, Britain’s film studios, open (1936)
- The USSR and Germany agree on the partition of Poland (1939)
- Cinerama, invented by Fred Waller, is first exhibited in New York (1952)
- Actor James Dean is killed in a car accident aged 24 (1955)
- The Flintstones first appearance on TV (1960)
- BBC’s Radio 1, the pop music station, starts broadcasting (1967)
- An estimated 10,000 people are killed in an earthquake in southern India (1993)
Births
- Michael Powell, English film director (1905)
- Truman Capote, American author (1924)
- Angie Dickinson, American actress (1931)
- Johnny Mathis, American singer (1935)
- Marc Bolan, English pop star (1947)
- Jack Wild, British actor (1952)
- Eric Stoltz, American actor (1961)
- Martina Hingis, Swiss tennis player (1980)
- Kieran Culkin, American actor (1982)
Deaths
- Richard Austin Freeman, British crime writer (1943)
- James Dean, American film actor (1955)
- Simone Signoret, French film actress (1985)
- Charles Richter, American seismologist (1985)
- Virgil Thomson, American composer (1989)