TODAY IN HISTORY

 

Bobby Fischer becomes the first American to win the World Chess Championship

On September 1, 1972, in what’s billed as the “Match of the Century,” American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky during the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland.

In the world’s most publicized title match ever played, Fischer, a 29-year-old Brooklynite, became the first American to win the competition since its inception in 1866. The victory also marked the first time a non-Russian had won the event in 24 years.

Fischer, who started playing chess professionally at age 8, won the U.S. Open Championship when he was 14 (he would go on to win it seven more times) and became the world’s youngest international grandmaster at age 15.

Fischer’s skills and age—and demanding, arrogant attitude—made him a pop culture phenomenon. He became the subject of books and movies and even inspired a song, “The Ballad of Bobby Fischer.”

Played during the Cold War, the Reykjavik match also carried political undertones. Fischer had already accused the Soviets of rigging the tournament system and didn’t mince words in his feelings about them, saying the match was “really the free world against the lying, cheating, hypocritical Russians … They always suggest that the world's leaders should fight it out hand to hand. And that is the kind of thing we are doing.”

Fischer missed the competition’s July 1 opening ceremony, after demanding more money, as well as a cut of TV and film rights. After a two-day delay—and a doubling of the prize purse by British millionaire Jim Slater—Fischer finally showed. A call from Henry Kissinger, national security assistant for President Nixon at the time, may have helped persuade him to compete, as well. “America wants you to go over there to beat the Russians,” he reportedly told Fischer.

“Fischer is known to be graceless, rude, possibly insane,” financier Slater once said. “I really don’t worry about that, because I didn’t do it for that reason. I did it because he was going to challenge the Russian supremacy, and it was good for chess.”

Spassky took the first game (Fischer blamed the TV cameras and ordered them to be removed). Fischer then forfeited the second game after some of his other demands weren’t met. Following much quarreling, the match resumed July 16 with a win by Fischer. Over 21 games, Fischer won seven, Spassky won three, and 11 were draws. Spassky resigned after 40 moves on the 21st game via telephone, with the final score set at 12.5 to 8.5

Fischer took home $156,250 in prize money for the feat, while the Soviet grandmaster Spassky, who was 35 and the reigning world champion, earned $93,750.

Fischer lost his world title by forfeit in 1975, when he refused to play against Soviet Anatoly Karpov in Manila after the competition’s governing body failed to meet all his demands. 

HOLIDAYS

2001

First Muslim holiday U.S. postage stamp is issued

Five years of lobbying comes to fruition on September 1, 2001, as the U.S. Postal Service releases the first American stamp celebrating Muslim holidays. A blue stamp featuring gold calligraphy celebrating Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, along with the English words “EID GREETINGS,” the stamp is included alongside stamps celebrating other religious holidays, a victory for Muslim representation in America.

SPORTS

1971

Pittsburgh Pirates field MLB's first all-Black lineup

On September 1, 1971, the Pittsburgh Pirates field the first all-Black lineup in Major League Baseball history in the team's 10-7 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. The history-making event receives zero coverage in Pittsburgh two major newspapers—both were on strike—and is mentioned only briefly during the team’s radio broadcast. Only 11,278 attend the game in Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium.

INVENTIONS & SCIENCE

1985

Wreck of the Titanic found

Seventy-three years after it sank to the North Atlantic ocean floor, a joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The sunken liner was about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below the surface.

21ST CENTURY

2004

Chechen separatists storm Russian school

On September 1, 2004, an armed gang of Chechen separatist rebels enters a school in southern Russia and takes more than 1,000 people hostage. The rebels demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from the disputed nearby region of Chechnya. September 1 was the first day of a new school year for millions of students across Russia, a day of celebration in schools that both parents and students traditionally attend. Nearly 340 people, about half of them children, died in the ensuing three-day ordeal.

AFRICA

1969

Qaddafi leads coup in Libya

Muammar al-Qaddafi, a 27-year-old Libyan army captain, leads a successful military coup against King Idris I of Libya. Idris was deposed and Qaddafi was named chairman of Libya’s new governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council. Qaddafi was born in a tent in the Libyan desert in 1942, the son of a Bedouin farmer. A gifted student, he graduated from the University of Libya in 1963 and the Libyan military academy at Banghazi in 1965. An ardent Arab nationalist, he plotted with a group of fellow officers to overthrow King Idris, who was viewed as overly conservative and indifferent to the movement for greater political unity among Arab countries. By the time Qaddafi attained the rank of captain, in 1969, the revolutionaries were ready to strike. They waited until King Idris was out of the country, being treated for a leg ailment at a Turkish spa, and then toppled his government in a bloodless coup. The monarchy was abolished, and Idris traveled from Turkey to Greece before finding asylum in Egypt. He died there in Cairo in 1983.

EARLY US

1807

Aaron Burr acquitted of treason

Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He was acquitted on the grounds that, though he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of the law governing treason. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe.

CIVIL WAR

1864

Atlanta falls to Union forces

On August 28, 1864, Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman lays siege to Atlanta, Georgia, a critical Confederate hub, shelling civilians and cutting off supply lines. The Confederates retreated, destroying the city’s munitions as they went. A Warsaw radio commentator describes Germany's invasion of Poland as it unfolds on September 1, 1939. Despite a non-aggression pact between the two countries, Hitler claimed Polish "atrocities" left him no choice but to invade.

WORLD WAR II

1939

Germany invades Poland

On September 1, 1939, German forces under the control of Adolf Hitler bombard Poland on land and from the air. World War II had begun. Why did Germany invade Poland? Germany invaded Poland to regain lost territory and ultimately rule their neighbor to the east. 

VIETNAM WAR

1966

French president Charles De Gaulle urges the United States to get out of Vietnam

In a speech before 100,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, President Charles de Gaulle of France denounces U.S. policy in Vietnam and urges the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia. De Gaulle said that negotiations toward a settlement of the war could begin as soon as the United States committed to withdrawing its troops by a certain date. He and Prince Norodom Sihanouk signed a declaration calling for noninterference in the Indochinese peninsula by foreign nations. Three days later, Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy on NBC-TV’s Meet The Press rejected de Gaulle’s proposal and said that the United States intended to withdraw its forces when “the North Vietnamese get out.” During the same speech, he also revealed that the United States now had 25,000 military people in Thailand, principally for air force operations.

SPORTS

1964

First Japanese player makes MLB debut

On September 1, 1964, pitcher Masanori Murakami becomes the first Japanese man to play in U.S. baseball’s major leagues. Murakami pitched a scoreless eighth inning for the San Francisco Giants in a 4-1 loss to the New York Mets in front of 39,379 fans at Shea Stadium. Murakami  was a teenage baseball prodigy in Japan. In 1962, he signed with Nippon Professional Baseball’s Nankai Hawks while still in high school. After pitching a year in the minors, Murakami made his major league debut with the Hawks at just 19 years old. In 1964, the Hawks sent Murakami to the United States to pitch in the minor leagues for the San Francisco Giants as part of an exchange program. Murakami’s left-handed sidearm delivery proved an asset in the United States, where deceptive pitching still isn’t as common as in Japan. Murakami began his American career with an 11-7 record as a reliever with Fresno in the Class A California League. On September 1, he was ordered to report to the bigs and handed a plane ticket to New York. After arrival, he quickly signed a contract (explained by an interpreter since he spoke no English) and then headed to the bullpen.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1850

P.T. Barnum brings European opera star Jenny Lind to New York

The iconic American huckster, showman and circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum is most often associated not with refined high culture but of somewhat coarser forms of entertainment—the circus, yes, but also Siamese twins and various human "oddities" such as “Zip the Pinhead” and the “Man-monkey.” It was none other than P.T. Barnum, however, who brought the greatest opera performer in the world from Europe to the United States in the mid-19th century for a triumphant national tour that set astonishing box-office records and fanned the flames of a widespread opera craze in 1850s America. That star was Jenny Lind—”The Swedish Nightingale”—a singer of uncommon talent and great renown whose arrival in New York City on this day in 1850 was greeted with a mania not unlike that which would greet another foreign musical invasion more than a century later.

CRIME

1981

A teenage boy murders his father

Fifteen-year-old Eric Witte shoots his father, 43-year-old volunteer firefighter Paul Witte, in the family’s Indiana home. Although Eric admitted to shooting his father, he claimed that the gun had accidentally gone off when he tripped on a rug. 

COLD WAR

1983

Korean Airlines flight shot down by Soviet Union

Soviet jet fighters intercept a Korean Airlines passenger flight in Russian airspace and shoot the plane down, killing 269 passengers and crew-members. The incident dramatically increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. 

INVENTIONS & SCIENCE

1998

Federal legislation makes airbags mandatory

On September 1, 1998, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 finally goes into effect. The law required that all cars and light trucks sold in the United States have air bags on both sides of the front seat. Inspired by the inflatable protective covers on Navy torpedoes, an industrial engineering technician from Pennsylvania named John Hetrick patented a design for a “safety cushion assembly for automotive vehicles” in 1953. The next year, Hetrick sent sketches of his device to Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, but the automakers never responded. Inflatable-safety-cushion technology languished until 1965, when Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed” speculated that seat belts and air bags together could prevent thousands of deaths in car accidents.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1775

King George refuses Olive Branch Petition

Richard Penn and Arthur Lee, representing the Continental Congress, present the so-called Olive Branch Petition to the Earl of Dartmouth on September 1, 1775. Britain’s King George III, however, refused to receive the petition, which, written by John Dickinson, appealed directly to the king and expressed hope for reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain.

WORLD WAR I

1917

Soldier recounts brush with poison gas

On September 1, 1917, American soldier Stull Holt writes a letter home recounting some of his battlefield experiences on the Western Front at Verdun, France. Born in New York City in 1896, Holt served during World War I as a driver with the American Ambulance Field Service.