What happened on September 26
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1580 to 1960, with the story behind each photograph.
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Two candidates debate on television for the first time
About 70 million people watched Kennedy and Nixon debate on 26 September 1960, the first televised presidential debate. Nixon had been ill, refused make-up and wore a grey suit that faded into the set. Polls afterwards suggested that people who heard it on the radio thought he had won, and people who watched it thought Kennedy had.
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A shell hits a powder store and blows the roof off a 2,000 year old temple
The Ottoman garrison was using the Parthenon as a gunpowder magazine, on the assumption that no besieger would fire on it. A Venetian mortar shell went through the roof on 26 September 1687 and the explosion destroyed the middle of the building, killing about 300 people. It had survived largely intact until that evening.
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A privateer returns after three years, having gone round the world
Francis Drake sailed into Plymouth on 26 September 1580 in the Golden Hind, the first captain to command a circumnavigation all the way round and survive it. His hold was full of Spanish silver. The queen's share is reckoned to have exceeded her entire annual income, and she knighted him on the deck.
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The largest battle in American history begins
The Meuse-Argonne offensive opened on 26 September 1918 with 1.2 million American soldiers in the line, the largest battle the United States has ever fought. It ran for 47 days and cost around 26,000 American lives, ending only with the armistice.
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A patent clerk publishes a paper that rewrites space and time
Einstein's paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" was published on 26 September 1905, written in his spare time while he worked as a patent examiner in Bern. It cites no other physicist by name. He was 26, and had been turned down for every academic job he applied for.