September 2 in History

Octavian's fleet, commanded by the brilliant admiral Agrippa, crushed the combined naval forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra off the coast of Actium in western Greece on September 2, 31 BC. Cleopatra fled the battle with her 60 ships when the outcome became uncertain, and Antony abandoned his fleet to follow her. The deserted sailors and soldiers surrendered to Octavian within days. The victory ended a century of Roman civil wars and left Octavian as the sole ruler of the Roman world. Within four years, he took the title Augustus and established the principate, ending the Republic and beginning the Roman Empire that would dominate the Mediterranean for over four centuries.

Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 1901, in which he quoted a West African proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." Roosevelt was still Vice President; President McKinley would be assassinated four days later. The phrase became the defining metaphor for Roosevelt's foreign policy as president: negotiate diplomatically but maintain credible military force. He applied this doctrine aggressively, building the Panama Canal, deploying the Great White Fleet around the world, mediating the Russo-Japanese War (winning the Nobel Peace Prize), and asserting American dominance in the Western Hemisphere through the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan's formal surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, ending six years of war that killed an estimated 70 to 85 million people. Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed for Japan, limping to the table on an artificial leg lost to a 1932 assassination attempt. MacArthur used five pens for his signature, distributing them as souvenirs. The ceremony lasted 23 minutes. MacArthur's brief speech called for "freedom, tolerance and justice" and established the tone for a seven-year occupation that transformed Japan from a militarist empire into a pacifist democracy. Representatives from nine Allied nations signed as witnesses.

Chemical Bank installed the first automated teller machine in the United States at its branch in Rockville Centre, New York, on September 2, 1969. The machine dispensed only cash and required a special coded card. Don Wetzel, who helped develop the machine, said he got the idea while standing in line at a bank. Early ATMs were crude: they couldn't check account balances in real time and could only dispense fixed amounts. Banks resisted the technology because they feared it would eliminate the personal relationships that drove customer loyalty. Instead, ATMs expanded banking hours to 24/7, allowing customers to access cash at any time, and fundamentally changed the relationship between people and their money.

Ho Chi Minh had already outlived what most people would have considered a full political life by the time the American war in Vietnam reached its peak intensity. He'd founded the Viet Minh independence movement in 1941, negotiated and then fought the French for nine years, and presided over the partition of Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Accords. He was seventy-nine and in poor health when he died in September 1969. The war was still six years from ending. His body was embalmed against his explicit wishes — he'd asked to be cremated. It lies in a mausoleum in Hanoi. The country reunified in 1976 and renamed Saigon in his honor.

The Great Fire of London broke out in Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane at around 1:00 a.m. on September 2, 1666, and burned for four days. Strong easterly winds drove the flames through the medieval city's timber-framed buildings, which were packed so tightly together that fire could jump from roof to roof. St. Paul's Cathedral, thirteen thousand houses, and 87 churches were destroyed. Remarkably, only six confirmed deaths were recorded, though the actual toll was certainly higher. King Charles II personally directed firefighting efforts, including the creation of firebreaks by demolishing buildings. The reconstruction, supervised by Christopher Wren, replaced medieval London with wider streets and stone buildings, creating the city's modern layout.

Parisian mobs, inflamed by rumors that imprisoned royalists and priests were planning to break out and slaughter revolutionary families while their men were away fighting at the front, stormed the city's prisons between September 2 and 7, 1792. Over five days, crowds dragged prisoners before improvised tribunals that passed instant judgments, then hacked the condemned to death with axes, pikes, and swords. Between 1,100 and 1,400 prisoners were killed, including over 200 priests and three bishops. Some victims were common criminals; many were political prisoners. The massacres terrified moderate revolutionaries and demonstrated that mob violence could override any legal process, foreshadowing the institutionalized Terror that would follow under Robespierre.