1821Central America declares its independence from Spain
For almost three centuries the lands from Chiapas to Costa Rica were ruled by Spain as the Captaincy General of Guatemala. By 1821 Spain’s American empire was collapsing. Mexico, to the north, had just broken away under Agustín de Iturbide, and in the towns of Central America the leading families argued over whether to follow.
On 15 September 1821 the captain general, Gabino Gaínza, called a meeting of officials, churchmen and leading citizens in Guatemala City while a crowd waited outside. The meeting voted for independence, and the act, written by the Honduran-born scholar José Cecilio del Valle, was signed that day. There was no war: the news travelled south by horse, and each province accepted it in turn over the following weeks. After a brief union with Mexico, the provinces formed their own federation in 1823, which later broke up into Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. All five still celebrate 15 September as their independence day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress, In Custodia Legis: Acta de Independencia de Centro América ↗
1830The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opens
Manchester’s cotton mills depended on the port of Liverpool, but goods moved between the two towns slowly and expensively by canal and road. In the 1820s a group of merchants commissioned George Stephenson to build a railway between them, 31 miles long, across the bog of Chat Moss and over the Sankey valley on a great viaduct. In 1829 trials at Rainhill settled that it would be worked by steam locomotives, and Stephenson’s Rocket won.
The line opened on 15 September 1830, when eight trains carried the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, and hundreds of guests out of Liverpool before huge crowds. When the trains stopped for water at Parkside, William Huskisson, a Liverpool MP, stepped down onto the track and was struck by Rocket; he died later that day at Eccles, one of the first people killed by a passenger train. The railway itself was an immediate success. It was the first to link two cities with steam trains running to a timetable for both passengers and goods, and it set the pattern for railways around the world.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Science and Industry Museum: The making of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway ↗
1940The Royal Air Force wins the decisive day of the Battle of Britain
In the summer of 1940, with France defeated, Germany prepared to invade Britain. First the Luftwaffe had to destroy the Royal Air Force. Through August it attacked airfields and radar stations, and from 7 September it turned on London. The German commanders believed that Fighter Command was close to collapse and that one more great effort would finish it.
On Sunday 15 September 1940 the Luftwaffe sent two large waves of bombers and fighters against London, one in the late morning and one in the afternoon. Warned by radar, the RAF met them with more squadrons than the German crews had been told still existed. Winston Churchill watched the battle unfold from the operations room at Uxbridge. About 60 German aircraft were shot down for the loss of fewer than 30 British fighters; at the time the RAF claimed 185. Two days later Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. The date has been kept ever since as Battle of Britain Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Imperial War Museums: 8 important dates in the Battle of Britain ↗
1950United Nations forces land at Inchon
North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, and within weeks the South Korean army and the American troops sent to help it had been driven into a small pocket around the port of Pusan in the far south-east. The United Nations commander, General Douglas MacArthur, proposed to break the deadlock with a landing far behind the enemy lines at Inchon, the port of Seoul. Other commanders doubted it could be done: Inchon had some of the highest tides in the world, narrow channels, mudflats and sea walls instead of beaches.
On 15 September 1950 US Marines took the island of Wolmi-do on the morning tide, and on the evening tide they climbed the sea walls of Inchon itself with scaling ladders. Resistance was light, and the landing force, the US X Corps, was ashore in strength within days. Seoul was retaken before the end of the month, and the North Korean army in the south, its supply lines cut, fell back in disorder. The war would turn again that winter, when China intervened.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US Naval History and Heritage Command: Inchon Landing (Operation Chromite) ↗
