#Middlebury
On Sept. 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use.- On Sept. 6, 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Far from an overnight success, it weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches, overheated and crawled over rough terrain at only 2 mph. With improvements, tanks would eventually transform military battlefields.
- On Sept. 11, 1930, Katherine Anne Porter’s first collection of short stories, “Flowering Judas,” is published. Porter went on to publish 25 stories and one novel, “Ship of Fools,” which took her more than two decades to complete.
- On Sept. 10, 1940, in light of the destruction and terror inflicted on Londoners by German bombing raids, called “the Blitz,” the British War Cabinet instructs British bombers over Germany to drop their bombs “anywhere” if unable to reach their targets. One even landed in the garden of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s minister of propaganda.
- On Sept. 7, 1950, Julie Kavner, perhaps best known as the voice of Marge Simpson on “The Simpsons,” the longest-running animated show in TV history, is born in Los Angeles.
- On Sept. 8, 1974, in a controversial executive action, President Gerald Ford pardons his disgraced predecessor Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while in office. Ford later explained that he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal.
- On Sept. 12, 1993, the rebuilt Lacey V. Murrow Bridge over Lake Washington opens in Seattle. The old bridge was almost 2 miles long, contained 100,000 tons of steel and floated on more than 20 hollow concrete pontoons. During repairs in 1990, the bridge broke apart and sank in a flood.
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