Moments In Time – Sept. 5, 2018

#Middlebury

• On Sept. 20, 1565, Spanish forces capture the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The French lost 135 men in the first instance of colonial warfare between European powers in America.
• On Sept. 23, 1846, at the Berlin Observatory, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovers the planet Neptune. The blue gas giant has eight known moons and a ring system containing three bright and two dim rings.
• On Sept. 17, 1884, Judge Allen disposes of 13 criminal cases on his Oakland, Calif., docket in only six minutes. Defendants did not stand much of a chance of gaining an acquittal. In a 40-year period only one defendant in 100 was acquitted.
• On Sept. 22, 1914, in the North Sea, the German U-9 submarine sinks three British cruisers in just over one hour. The one-sided battle, during which 1,400 British sailors lost their lives, alerted the British to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine.
• On Sept. 21, 1938, without warning, a powerful Category 3 hurricane slams into Long Island and southern New England, causing 600 deaths. The storm had been forecast to make landfall in Florida.
• On Sept. 18, 1981, the 20,000-car parking lot at Canada’s new West Edmonton Mall makes the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest parking lot in the world. The mall has more than 800 stores, 100 restaurants, three radio stations, two hotels, a full-size ice-skating rink, nightclubs and a chapel.
• On Sept. 19, 1995, The Washington Post publishes a 35,000-word manifesto written by the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. Since the late 1970s, Kaczynski had carried out bombings that killed three people and injured another 23. David Kaczynski realized the writing style was similar to that of his brother, Theodore, and notified the FBI.

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