September 1 is:
Emma M. Nutt Day, the first woman telephone operator. In January 1878, the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company had started hiring boys as telephone operators, starting with George Willard Croy. Boys (reportedly including Nutt’s husband had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behavior (pranks and cursing) were unacceptable for live phone contact, so the company began hiring women operators instead. A few hours after Nutt started working, her sister Stella became the world’s second female telephone operator, also making the pair the first two sister telephone operators in history.
National Gyro Day A gyro is a dish of meat roasted on a vertical spit. It is usually served as a sandwich, also called a gyros, with tomato, onion, and tzatziki sauce, wrapped in pita bread.
September 1, 1715: The reign of Louis XIV (the Sun King) of France ended with his death after 72 years on the throne, the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history.
The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa was founded by Father Junípero Serra in San Luis Obispo, California on September 1, 1772. Serra had established a mission in Monterey. Due to food shortages, he sent a hunting expedition to San Luis Obispo to help feed the Spanish and neophytes (natives that converted to Christianity) in Monterey. The huge success of the hunting expedition caused Junípero Serra to consider building a mission in that area. Upon further investigation, he was convinced that San Luis Obispo would be a perfect site for a mission, based on its surplus of natural resources, good weather and the Chumash, a local, friendly Native American tribe who could help provide labor. The mission became the fifth in the mission chain founded by Father Junípero Serra. San Luis Obispo is located 190 miles north of Los Angeles and 230 miles south of San Francisco.
The Boston subway, green line, opened in 1897, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.
Alberta and Saskatchewan joined the Canadian Confederation on September 1, 1905.
In 1914, St. Petersburg, Russia, changes its name to Petrograd. St. Petersburg, which is Russia’s second largest urban area, was founded in 1703 by the czar Peter the Great. In 1914, the German sounding name was changed to Petrograd. Then, after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, the Soviet Union changed the city’s name to Leningrad. Leningrad became St. Petersburg again 67 years later when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon , died on September 1, 1914, making her species extinct. Its common name is derived from the French word passager, meaning “passing by”, due to the migratory habits of the species.
September 1, 1939: Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II.
Also on this day in 1939, Adolf Hitler signed an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people. In October 1939 Hitler empowered his personal physician and the chief of the Chancellery of the Führer to kill people considered unsuited to live. He backdated his order to September 1, 1939, the day World War II began, to give it the appearance of a wartime measure. The Nazis referred to the program’s victims as “burdensome lives” and “useless eaters.”
1952 – The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, was first published.
Muammar al-Gaddafi took power in Libya, in a coup in 1969.
Uzbekistan became independent from the Soviet Union on this date in 1991.
1997 – In France, the prosecutor’s office announced that the driver of the car, in which Britain’s Princess Diana was killed, was over the legal alcohol limit.
1998 – The movie “Titanic” went on sale across North America.
1998 – Mark McGwire (St. Louis Cardinals) hit his 56th and 57th homeruns to set a new National League record. He would eventually reach a total of 70 for the season on September 27.
1998 – J.K. Rowling’s book “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was released in the U.S. This was the first book in the Harry Potter series.