Today In History - September 23

1642 Harvard College holds its first commencement
1779 John Paul Jones' "Bon Homme Richard" defeats the "HMS Serepis"
1780 British Major John Andre was apprehended as a Spy, near Tarrytown, NY
1806 Lewis and Clark return to St Louis from the Pacific Northwest
1845 The first baseball team, NY Knickerbockers, organize and adopt rule code
1846 Johann Gottfried Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest find Neptune
1862 Lincoln's Emancipation is published in Northern Newspapers
1863 Confederate siege of Chattanooga begins
1868 Grito de Lares proclaims Puerto Rico's independence
1873 Tom Allen beats Mike McCale for Heavyweight Boxing title
1879 Baldwin steam motors tram is first tried in Sydney Australia
1897 The first frontier days rodeo celebration (Cheyene Wyoming)
1908 The University of Alberta opens
1912 The first Mack Sennett "Keystone Comedy" movie released
1926 Gene Tunney defeats Jack Dempsey for the world heavyweight boxing title
1932 Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd are renamed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
1938 Time capsule, to be opened in 6939 is buried at the World's Fair in New York City (capsule contains a woman's hat, man's pipe, and 1,100' of microfilm)
1949 President Truman announces evidence of USSR's first nuclear device detonation
1952 Richard Nixon makes his "Checker's" speech
1952 Rocky Marciano KOs heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott in 13 for heavyweight boxing title
1961 The first movie to become a TV series: How to Marry a Millionaire
1962 ABC's first color TV series: The Jetsons
1969 Northern Star starts rumor that Paul McCartney is dead
1973 Former Argentine President Juan Peron returns to power
1974 Cliff Arquette "Charlie Weaver" dies at 68
1976 The Ford-Carter TV debate
1977 Cheryl Ladd replaces Farrah Fawcett on Charlie's Angels
1978 100,000 cheering Egyptians welcome Sadat home from the Camp David summit
1979 Jane Fonda and 200,000 attend anti-nuke rally in Battery Park, New York City
1979 Lou Brock steals a record 935th base
1980 The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opens
1990 PBS begins an 11 hour miniseries on The Civil War
1990 Saddam Hussein says he will destroy Israel
1991 NY Islanders Mike Bossy and Denis Potvin are inducted into NHL Hall of Fame

484BC Euripides
63BC Octavian (first Roman Emperor)
1713 Ferdinand VI
1745 John Sevier
1800 William H. McGuffey
1852 William Stewart Halsted
1869 Edgar Lee Masters
1870 John Lomax
1880 John Boyd Orr
1889 Walter Lippmann
1900 Louise Nevelson
1910 Elliot Roosevelt
1910 Soulima Stravinsky
1917 Imry Nemeth
1920 Mickey Rooney
1926 John Coltrane
1930 Ray Charles
1936 Sylvain Saudan
1938 Romy Schneider
1943 Julio Iglesias
1944 Loren J. Shriver
1945 Paul Petersen
1947 Mary Kay Place
1949 Bruce Springsteen
1955 Patti Weaver
1956 Maren Jensen
1957 Sylvie Garant
1967 Harry Connick, Jr.