Sept. 15 historic events
1776 American Revolutionary War: British forces land at Kip’s Bay during the New York Campaign and occupy New York City.
1789 The United States Department of State is established (formerly known as Department of Foreign Affairs).
1812 The French army under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow.
1831 The locomotive John Bull operates for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad.
1862 American Civil War: Confederate forces capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
1873 Franco-Prussian War: The last German troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity.
1935 Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of citizenship.
1940 World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Royal Air Force shoots down large numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft.
1942 World War II: U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp is torpedoed and sunk at Guadalcanal.
1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.
1947 Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077.
1948 The F86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 mph (1080 km/h).
1950 Korean War: United States forces land at Inchon in the south and began their drive toward Seoul.
1958 A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 58.
1959 Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.
1962 The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1963 The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Four black girls were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, in the deadliest act of the civil rights era. (The KKK planted 122 sticks of dynamite which killed three 14-year-olds and an eleven-year-old.)
1966 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation. (This attack by Charles Whitman and the lack of police training for such a situation led to the formation of SWAT police units.)
1968 The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere.
1974 Air Vietnam flight 727 is hijacked, then crashes while attempting to land with 75 on board.
1981 The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
1981 The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.
1987 United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sign a treaty to establish centers to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
2004 National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.
2005 President George W. Bush, addressing the nation from storm-ravaged New Orleans, acknowledged the government failed to respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina and urged Congress to approve a massive reconstruction program.
2008 Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. History.