1810Chile forms its first national junta
In 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain, took King Ferdinand VII prisoner and put his own brother on the throne. Across Spanish America, colonies that owed loyalty to the king were left asking who now had the right to govern them. In Chile an unpopular governor, Francisco Antonio García Carrasco, was forced out in July 1810 and replaced by an elderly local nobleman, Mateo de Toro y Zambrano, the Count of la Conquista.
On the morning of 18 September 1810 several hundred leading citizens of Santiago met in an open town meeting, a cabildo abierto. They agreed to set up a governing junta of their own, with Toro y Zambrano as its president, to rule in the captive king’s name until he was restored. Its members swore loyalty to Ferdinand, but for the first time Chileans were governing themselves, and the step led on to a national congress, to war and to the declaration of independence in 1818. Chile keeps 18 September as its national day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile: Primera Junta de Gobierno (1810) ↗
1793George Washington lays the cornerstone of the United States Capitol
In 1790 the United States Congress decided to build a new capital city on the Potomac River. The French-born engineer Pierre L’Enfant chose a hill at its heart for the building where Congress would meet, and a competition for its design was won by William Thornton, a doctor and amateur architect born in the British West Indies. President George Washington praised the plan for its grandeur, simplicity and convenience.
On 18 September 1793 Washington crossed the Potomac with a company of artillery and joined members of the Masonic lodges of Virginia, Maryland and the new federal city. They marched in procession, with music and flags, to the building site, where Washington, wearing a Masonic apron, set the cornerstone at the south-east corner of the foundations. The day ended with a barbecue. Congress moved into the unfinished building in 1800. Despite several searches, the stone itself has never been identified for certain.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Architect of the Capitol: Capitol Cornerstone Ceremony, 1793 ↗
1931An explosion on a railway near Mukden opens Japan’s seizure of Manchuria
After its war with Russia in 1904-05 Japan controlled the South Manchuria Railway, which ran through north-eastern China, and kept an army there, the Kwantung Army, to guard it. By 1931 some of its officers, alarmed by the growing strength of Chinese nationalism and impatient with their own government in Tokyo, had decided to take the whole of Manchuria by force.
On the night of 18 September 1931 a small charge exploded beside the railway track near Mukden, today’s Shenyang. It did so little damage that a train passed over the spot soon afterwards, but the Japanese army blamed Chinese soldiers, attacked the nearby barracks and occupied the city by morning. Within months it held all of Manchuria and set up a puppet state there. A League of Nations commission found against Japan, which left the League in 1933. The incident is widely seen as a step on the road to the Second World War in Asia.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Mukden Incident ↗
1961Dag Hammarskjöld is killed in an air crash near Ndola
Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish economist and diplomat, had been Secretary-General of the United Nations since 1953 and had made the office a far more active force in world affairs. In 1960 the newly independent Congo fell into crisis when its mineral-rich province of Katanga broke away, and the UN sent a large peacekeeping force. In September 1961 fighting broke out between UN troops and Katanga’s forces.
Hammarskjöld set out to meet the Katangan leader, Moïse Tshombe, to arrange a ceasefire. Shortly after midnight on the night of 17-18 September 1961 his chartered DC-6 crashed in the bush as it approached the airport at Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. All sixteen people on board died; the one man found alive, the security officer Harold Julien, died of his injuries a few days later. An early inquiry pointed to pilot error, but the cause has never been settled, and later UN investigations have judged it plausible that the aircraft was attacked or threatened from outside. Hammarskjöld was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after his death.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United Nations: 63 years later, mystery still surrounds death of Dag Hammarskjöld ↗
2014Scotland votes to stay in the United Kingdom
Scotland and England have shared a parliament since the union of 1707, and Scotland has had its own devolved parliament in Edinburgh since 1999. In 2011 the Scottish National Party, which wants independence, won a majority there, and the following year the British and Scottish governments agreed that a referendum should settle the matter. Voters were asked a single question: ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’
The vote was held on 18 September 2014 after a long and passionate campaign, and for the first time 16- and 17-year-olds could take part. Turnout was 84.6 per cent, the highest in any Scottish election or referendum since everyone gained the vote. No won by 2,001,926 votes to 1,617,989, or 55.3 per cent to 44.7. Glasgow and Dundee were among four council areas that voted Yes. The first minister, Alex Salmond, announced his resignation the next day, and further powers were later passed to the Scottish Parliament.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Electoral Commission: Report on the Scottish independence referendum ↗
