What happened on September 15
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1830 to 1981, with the story behind each photograph.
Reveal the full answer key
-
Tanks are used in battle for the first time
Forty-nine tanks were sent into action at Flers-Courcelette on the Somme on 15 September 1916. Only about eighteen reached the German lines - the rest broke down or ditched - but where they arrived the effect was immediate. They were built in secret and shipped in crates marked "water tank", which is how they got the name.
-
A survey ship reaches the islands that will reshape biology
HMS Beagle reached the Galapagos on 15 September 1835 with Charles Darwin aboard as an unpaid naturalist. He spent five weeks there and did not immediately grasp what he had found - he failed to label which island his finches came from, and had to reconstruct it later from other people's notes.
-
A boxer wins the heavyweight title for a third time
Muhammad Ali beat Leon Spinks in New Orleans on 15 September 1978 to take the heavyweight championship for an unprecedented third time, aged thirty-six. Spinks had taken the title from him seven months earlier in only his eighth professional fight.
-
The first woman is confirmed to the United States Supreme Court
The Senate confirmed Sandra Day O'Connor on 21 September 1981 after her hearings concluded on the 15th, making her the first woman on the Supreme Court in its 191-year history. The vote was 99 to 0. On graduating third in her class from Stanford Law in 1952, the only job a law firm had offered her was legal secretary.
-
The first intercity passenger railway opens, and kills a member of parliament
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened on 15 September 1830, the first to link two cities with scheduled passenger trains hauled entirely by steam. The day was overshadowed when William Huskisson, MP for Liverpool, stepped onto the track to greet the Duke of Wellington and was run down by the Rocket. He is generally reckoned the first widely reported railway fatality.