Today In History
September 12 in History
Your birthday shares the stage with stories that shaped the world.
Haile Selassie Deposed: Ethiopia's Emperor Overthrown by Communists
A military coup by the Derg topples Emperor Haile Selassie after his 58-year reign, shattering Ethiopia's ancient monarchy and triggering decades of brutal civil war. This violent shift dismantles imperial rule, plunging the nation into chaos that claims millions of lives before a new government finally emerges.
Famous Birthdays
Lorenzo de' Medici Born: Renaissance Dynasty Continues
Lorenzo de' Medici inherited the dual legacy of Florence's most powerful banking dynasty and served as Duke of Urbino before his early death at 26. His brief rule connected two eras of Medici dominance, and his daughter Catherine would later become Queen of France, extending the family's political influence across the continent.
Irene Joliot-Curie
Irene Joliot-Curie was the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for synthesizing new radioactive elements — specifically, for being the first to create artificial radioactivity. She and her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie showed you could bombard aluminum with alpha particles and produce a radioactive isotope of phosphorus. This opened the door to producing radioactive isotopes for use in medicine and research, a technique that now underlies nuclear medicine diagnostics. She died in 1956 of leukemia, like her mother. Years of radiation exposure, carried in her body since childhood. The Curie family paid a price for their science.
Neil Peart
He didn't start playing drums until he was 13 — late by any serious musician's standard — and spent years practicing in his parents' basement in Port Dalhousie, Ontario, mailing demo tapes to anyone who'd listen. Neil Peart joined Rush at 21 and quietly became the most technically studied rock drummer alive, writing a book on his own grief after losing his daughter and wife within ten months. He left behind 'The Camera Eye,' 'YYZ,' and 167 Rush compositions he wrote the words to.
Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing
He was the youngest of ten children of a Shanghai textile merchant, grew up performing in shopping malls, and became the defining star of Hong Kong's cultural golden age — singing Cantopop, acting in art-house films for Wong Kar-wai, directing stage productions, and doing it all with an androgynous glamour that was decades ahead of his industry. Leslie Cheung died on April 1, 2003, and fans initially refused to believe it. He left behind Farewell My Concubine, Happy Together, and a grief in Hong Kong that still surfaces, quietly, every April.
Ben Folds
He taught himself piano by ear and was performing in bars in North Carolina before he was old enough to drink in them. Ben Folds, born 1966, made piano-driven alt-rock feel urgent during the 1990s when guitars were supposed to be the only option — and then quietly became one of the most versatile composers working, scoring for orchestra, writing a college textbook on music, chairing arts panels. He left 'The Luckiest,' a song that people play at weddings without realizing it's actually about mortality.
Richard March Hoe
Richard March Hoe revolutionized mass communication by inventing the rotary printing press, which replaced the slow, flatbed method with cylinders that spun at high speeds. His innovation slashed the cost of newspapers, allowing daily journalism to reach a massive, working-class audience for the first time in American history.
William Sprague
William Sprague transformed Rhode Island’s textile industry before serving as its youngest governor at age 30. During the Civil War, he famously led his state's militia into the First Battle of Bull Run, cementing his reputation as a wealthy industrialist who directly financed and commanded Union forces during the conflict's opening months.
H. H. Asquith
H.H. Asquith served as Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, long enough to introduce the Parliament Act that stripped the House of Lords of its veto, and to take Britain into World War I. He was replaced by Lloyd George in December 1916 in what amounted to a political coup by members of his own coalition. He died in 1928 still bitter about it. He left behind the foundations of the British welfare state — the pension, the national insurance act — and a Liberal Party he'd failed to hold together at exactly the moment it needed him most.
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf transformed American literature by prioritizing high-quality design and rigorous editorial standards for his publishing house. By championing European modernists and sophisticated translations, he elevated the status of the book as a physical object and introduced a generation of readers to authors like Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, and Albert Camus.
Juscelino Kubitschek
Juscelino Kubitschek accelerated Brazil’s modernization by constructing Brasília, a planned capital city designed to shift the nation’s focus toward its underdeveloped interior. As the 21st president, he implemented his "fifty years of progress in five" development plan, which successfully expanded the country's industrial base and highway infrastructure despite triggering significant national debt.
Maria Muldaur
Maria Muldaur brought the earthy, syncopated rhythms of jug band music and blues into the mainstream with her 1973 hit Midnight at the Oasis. Her career bridged the gap between the Greenwich Village folk revival and the improvisational spirit of the Jerry Garcia Band, proving that traditional American roots music could thrive on the pop charts.
Bertie Ahern
He served as Taoiseach during the longest sustained economic boom in Irish history — the Celtic Tiger years — and also brokered the final negotiations of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, shuttling between parties for 36 consecutive hours in the last push before a deal. Bertie Ahern liked horse racing, wore famously mismatched suits, and ran Dublin's most effective political machine since the 1950s. He later resigned amid financial irregularities involving personal cash payments. The man who helped end a 30-year conflict couldn't quite explain where some of his own money had come from.
Historical Events
A military coup by the Derg topples Emperor Haile Selassie after his 58-year reign, shattering Ethiopia's ancient monarchy and triggering decades of brutal civil war. This violent shift dismantles imperial rule, plunging the nation into chaos that claims millions of lives before a new government finally emerges.
South African security forces kill anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko while he is detained without trial, sparking global outrage that isolates the apartheid regime further. His death galvanizes international sanctions and accelerates the internal resistance that eventually dismantles the system of institutionalized racial segregation.
Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit at Texas Instruments, cramming multiple electronic components onto a single semiconductor chip for the first time. This proof of concept eliminated the need for hand-wired connections between discrete components, launching the miniaturization revolution that produced modern computers, smartphones, and every digital device in existence.
Norman Borlaug died at 95, having saved more lives than any other person in history through his development of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat strains that averted mass famine across Asia and Latin America. His Green Revolution fed over a billion people who would have otherwise starved, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize and the unofficial title "Father of the Green Revolution."
Jin Xiaowudi was 10 years old when he inherited the Eastern Jin throne — a dynasty already reduced to ruling only southern China while the north fractured into the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms. He'd rule for 23 years, mostly under the influence of powerful ministers. His death at 35 was reportedly caused by a concubine who smothered him after he joked that she was getting old. The empire he nominally commanded outlasted him by another 35 years before finally collapsing.
Peter II of Aragon had 4,000 knights. Simon de Montfort had around 1,000. The math looked straightforward until Peter rode into battle with his identity deliberately concealed — a medieval tradition of honor combat — and was killed before anyone realized who he was. The death of Aragon's king in an unrecognized cavalry charge ended the Aragonese bid to control southern France. The Cathars of Languedoc lost their most powerful protector. The Albigensian Crusade ground on without serious opposition for another 15 years.
James I of Aragon was 21 years old when he landed at Santa Ponça with roughly 15,000 troops and 150 ships. Majorca had been under Moorish control for three centuries. The conquest took until December 31. James kept going — Valencia next, then Ibiza, Formentera, Minorca. He'd reign for 63 years and personally oversee more territorial expansion than any other Aragonese king. It all started with this September beach landing by a 21-year-old who wasn't yet sure he'd win.
King Denis of Portugal and King Ferdinand IV of Castile signed the Treaty of Alcañices to finalize their shared frontier and seal a lasting friendship. This papal-mediated agreement ended decades of border skirmishes, establishing a stable boundary that remains largely unchanged between the two nations today.
Gibraltar had changed hands repeatedly since the Romans, and Castile wanted it for the same reason everyone did: whoever held that narrow rock controlled the strait between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The 1309 siege succeeded — Castile took Gibraltar from the Emirate of Granada in a matter of weeks. But they couldn't hold it. Granada retook it in 1333. Castile got it back in 1462. Then Spain held it until Britain seized it in 1704 and has kept it ever since. Some rocks attract conquest indefinitely.
A coalition of European armies led by Polish King Jan III Sobieski smashed the Ottoman siege lines surrounding Vienna in one of history's largest cavalry charges. The decisive rout ended Ottoman expansion into Central Europe permanently and triggered a Habsburg counteroffensive that would strip the Ottomans of Hungary and vast Balkan territories within two decades.
American militia forces halted the British land advance toward Baltimore at North Point, killing the commanding British general and buying critical time for the defense of Fort McHenry. The combined defense inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner" the following night, transforming a tactical delay into an enduring symbol of national resilience.
Captain William Lewis Herndon stayed on the bridge after ordering women and children into lifeboats. The SS Central America was taking on water 160 miles offshore in a Category 2 hurricane, carrying 477 passengers and 578 mailbags of California gold. Herndon went down with the ship in full dress uniform. The 13 to 15 tons of gold — worth roughly $2 billion today — sat on the ocean floor for 130 years before a recovery team found it in 1988. The wreck triggered one of the messiest treasure-salvage legal battles in American history.
Mahler called it the Symphony of a Thousand — not modestly. The premiere in Munich used 1,023 performers total: 852 singers across multiple choirs and 171 orchestral players. He'd never heard it with a full ensemble before that night; the forces required made proper rehearsal nearly impossible. The audience included Siegmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, and the composer Richard Strauss. Mahler died nine months later. He never heard the symphony performed again.
Wilfred Rhodes played his first first-class cricket match in 1898 and his last in 1930 — a 32-year span no professional cricketer has matched. He took 4,204 wickets and scored 39,802 runs. At his peak he batted at number 11 for England; by 1912 he'd risen to open the batting. He finished his career by taking five wickets in his final match against the Australians, aged 52. The last game of 1,110.
Leó Szilárd had just read H.G. Wells' novel 'The World Set Free,' which described atomic bombs destroying cities, when he stepped off the curb at Southampton Row. The traffic light turned red. He waited. And standing there, he worked out that if a neutron could split an atom and release two neutrons, those two could split two more atoms, releasing four — and so on, indefinitely. He filed a patent on the chain reaction in 1934 and assigned it to the British Admiralty to keep it secret. He'd just invented the theoretical basis for both nuclear power and the atomic bomb, at a traffic light.
Fun Facts
Zodiac Sign
Virgo
Aug 23 -- Sep 22
Earth sign. Analytical, kind, and hardworking.
Birthstone
Sapphire
Blue
Symbolizes truth, sincerity, and faithfulness.
Next Birthday
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days until September 12
Quote of the Day
“This land may be profitable to those that will adventure it.”
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