Moments in Time – August 25, 2022

#Middlebury

• On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon guerrillas, stoked by a deep resentment of decades of public abuse and federal interference, murder 120 emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Utah. The conflict apparently began when the Mormons refused to sell the emigrants any supplies.
• On Sept. 10, 1897, a 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk driving. A true breath test didn’t come along until 1931 with a device called the Drunkometer. It involved a blow-up balloon and a tube filled with a purple fluid (potassium permanganate and sulfuric acid). Alcohol on a person’s breath changed the color of the fluid from purple to yellow; the quicker the change, the drunker the person.
• On Sept. 7, 1936, Charles Harden Holley is born in Lubbock, Texas. Performing under the name Buddy Holly, he left behind a rock ‘n’ roll legacy that includes “That’ll Be the Day” and “Maybe Baby” after his death in 1959 at the age of 22.
• On Sept. 9, 1942, in the first and only air attack on the U.S. mainland during World War II, a Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on Oregon’s Mount Emily, setting fire to a state forest. The president immediately called for a news blackout for the sake of morale.
• On Sept. 8, 1965, the five-year Delano Grape Strike begins as over 2,000 Filipino American farmworkers refuse to go to work picking grapes near Bakersfield, California. Over the next five years, even American households stopped buying grapes in support of the farmworkers.
• On Sept. 5, 1972, at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, a group of Palestinian terrorists, known as Black September, storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage. In an ensuing shootout at the Munich airport, the nine Israeli hostages were killed.
• On Sept. 6, 1995, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. plays in his 2,131st consecutive game. Ripken went on to play 2,632 games in a row before ending the streak by voluntarily removing himself from a game against the New York Yankees on Sept. 19, 1998.

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