Moments in Time – August 28, 2024

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• On Sept. 9, 2021, Tom Brady became the first player in NFL history to start 300 regular season games as he guided the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to an opening day 31-29 win at home over the Dallas Cowboys.
• On Sept. 10, 1813, U.S. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry led a fleet of nine American ships to victory over a squadron of six British warships at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812, in the first unqualified defeat of a British naval squadron in history.
• On Sept. 11, 1941, Charles Lindbergh’s Des Moines speech, which advocated a position of nonintervention and was met with outrage in many quarters, accused the British, Jews and FDR’s administration of pressing for war with Germany.
• On Sept. 12, 1977, Steve Biko, a strong anti-apartheid activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, was killed in an African prison while in police custody. Two decades later, five former police officers confessed to the murder and applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty, but their request was denied in 1999.
• On Sept. 13, 1926, the Post Office Department sent a memo to its 25,000 railway mail clerks containing an order to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail, following an ever-increasing number of thefts. They also issued a statement saying that if the robberies continued, the Marines would be again called in to protect the mail.
• On Sept. 14, 1741, George Frideric Handel completed his oratorio “Messiah,” which was originally an Easter offering. Mesmerizing audiences ever since its first performance in Dublin, Ireland’s Musick Hall the following April, it remains a beloved feature of the Christmas season more than two centuries later.
• On Sept. 15, 1830, William Huskisson, a British statesman, financier and member of Parliament, was run over and fatally injured by Robert Stephenson’s pioneering locomotive Rocket. Though he’s commonly known as the world’s first widely reported railway passenger casualty, the actual first such death had occurred nine years earlier.

© 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.