1791 – Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington.

1850 – California is admitted as the thirty-first U.S. state.

1850 – The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas’ claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas’s pre-annexation debt.

1926 – The U.S. National Broadcasting Company is formed.

1940 – George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer.

1947 – First actual case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.

1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.

1965 – The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established.

1965 – Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion ($10–12 billion in 2005 dollars) in damages, becoming the first hurricane to top $1 billion in unadjusted damages.

1966 – The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

2001 – Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al Qaeda assassins who claimed to be Arab journalists wanting an interview.

Alaskan/Benjamin Orr Trivia: Benjamin Orr died of pancreatic cancer in 2000. His final public appearance was on August 28, 2000, in a Big People concert in Anchorage, Alaska.

1888 – In London, the body of Jack the Ripper’s second murder victim, Annie Chapman, is found.

1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited.

1926 – Germany is admitted to the League of Nations.

1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch transparent tape.

1935 – US Senator from Louisiana, Huey Long, nicknamed “Kingfish”, is fatally shot in the Louisiana capitol building.

1941 – World War II: Siege of Leningrad begins. German forces begin a siege against the Soviet Union’s second-largest city, Leningrad.

1944 – World War II: London is hit by a V2 rocket for the first time.

1951 – Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco, California, 48 nations sign a peace treaty with Japan in formal recognition of the end of the Pacific War.

1960 – In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).

1966 – The first Star Trek series premieres on NBC.

1968 – The Beatles perform their last live TV performance on the David Frost show. They perform their new hit “Hey Jude”.

1971 – In Washington, D.C., the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is inaugurated, with the opening feature being the premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.

1974 – Watergate Scandal: US President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office.

1975 – Gays in the military: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appears in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline “I Am A Homosexual”. He is later given a general discharge.

1986 The five billionth barrel of Alaskan oil left Pump Station #1 at Prudhoe Bay.

1864 – American Civil War: Atlanta, Georgia, is evacuated on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.

1876 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town’s bank but are driven off by armed citizens.

1907 – Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.

1916 – Federal employees win the right to Workers’ compensation by Federal Employers Liability Act (39 Stat. 742; 5 U.S.C. 751)

1927 – The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.

1936 – The last surviving member of the thylacine species, Benjamin, dies alone in her cage at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.

1940 – World War II: The Blitz – Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London. This will be the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing.

1942 – Holocaust: 8,700 Jews of Kolomyia (western Ukraine) sent by German Gestapo to death camp in Belzec.

1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is elected first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1970 – An anti-war rally is held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, attended by John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.

1977 – The Torrijos-Carter Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The United States agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th
century.

1979 – The Chrysler Corporation asks the United States government for USD $1.5 billion to avoid bankruptcy.

1996 – American Hip-Hop star Tupac Shakur is fatally shot four times on the Las Vegas strip after leaving the Tyson-Seldon boxing match.

2005 – First presidential election is held in Egypt.

2008 – The US Government takes control of the two largest mortgage financing companies in the US, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

1979 The State of Alaska ran ads costing $110,000 in 32 metropolitan newspapers nationwide urging readers to “FREE ALASKA” and to oppose the Udall-Anderson D-2 lands bill.

I captured this video on August 26, 2010. I apologize for the raw quality, but I haven’t had the time to edit it.

Happy Labor Day.

The picturesque, but snow-capped volcanoes, composing the Islands of the Four Mountains in Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain look suspiciously like an alien world in this August 2010 image from the ASTER camera aboard NASA’s orbiting Terra satellite.

The islands contain restless Mt. Cleveland, an active volcano currently being watched to see if it emits an ash cloud that could affect air travel over parts of North America. A close look at Mt. Cleveland, seen near the image center, shows red vegetation (false color), a white snow-covered peak, a light plume of gas and ash, and dark lanes where ash and debris fell or flowed. Millions of volcanoes have likely been active over the turbulent history of the Earth’s surface, while about 20 volcanoes are erupting even today, at any given time.

Image Credit: NASA

The Islands of Four Mountains is actually a group of islands in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The “Four Mountains” refer to the four volcanoes that exist amongst the numerous island mountains in the grouping.

Here’s one of my favorite shots of the region:

(click image to biggify)

1522 – The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.

1628 – Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1847 – Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden Pond and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts.

1861 – American Civil War: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, which gives the Union control of the mouth of the Tennessee River.

1870 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.

1901 – Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

1949 – A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, with a souvenir Luger to become the first U.S. single-episode mass murderer.

1970 – Two passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of PFLP and taken to Dawson’s Field in Jordan.

1972 – Munich Massacre: 9 Israel athletes taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games by the Palestinian “Black September” terrorist group died (as did a German policeman) at the hands of the kidnappers during a failed rescue attempt. 2 other Israeli athletes are slain in the initial attack the previous day.

1976 – Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaidō in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States.

1983 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.

1991 – The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia’s second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.

1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales is laid to rest in front of a television audience of more than 2.5 billion.

This is a collection of time-lapse videos of the Earth from the ISS.

Also, I’ll be arranging and rearranging the menus up top; as certain topics become more topical, I’ll rotate them in to give people easier access to the content they’re interested in.

There are a few other changes you may, or may not, notice — and some others still coming.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy your time here.

On September 5, 1774 – The first session of the U.S. Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. The delegates drafted a declaration of rights and grievances, organized the Continental Association, and elected Peyton Randolph as the first president of the Continental Congress.

On September 5, 1882 – The first U.S. Labor Day parade was held in New York City.

On September 5, 1930 – Charles Creighton and James Hagris completed the drive from New York City to Los Angeles and back to New York City all in reverse gear. The trip took 42 days in their 1929 Ford Model A.

On September 5, 1939 – The U.S. proclaimed its neutrality in World War II.

On September 5, 1945 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino was arrested. D’Aquino was suspected of being the wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose”. She served six years before being pardoned by U.S. President Ford.

On September 5, 1975 – A Secret Service agent foiled an assassination attempt against U.S. U.S. President Gerald R. Ford. Lynette A. “Squeaky” Fromme was a follower of Charles Manson, who was incarcerated at the time. 17 days later, Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate Ford.

On September 5, 1977 – The U.S. launched Voyager .

On September 5, 1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein urged for a Holy War against the West and former allies.

1979 80% of Anchorage’s school teachers walked out in the first teacher strike in Anchorage .