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HISTORY & TIMELINE
1 September

A journey through
1 September in history

The story of 1 September runs from the coronation of the Byzantine emperor Isaac I Komnenos in 1057 to the discovery of the Titanic’s wreck in 1985. In between come the death of Louis XIV and the accession of his five-year-old great-grandson, the birth of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon, the proclamation of Greater Lebanon, the Great Kantō earthquake, Germany’s invasion of Poland, the signing of the ANZUS treaty, the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in a single issue of Life, Libya’s revolution and Bobby Fischer’s victory over Boris Spassky in Reykjavik.

Begin the Timeline ↓ ← Back to Explore This Day
JUMP THROUGH TIME
II
THE MIDDLE AGES

Medieval History

Kingdoms, conflict, faith, power and the changing medieval world.

1057
Both sides of a gold histamenon of Isaac I Komnenos, struck at Constantinople in 1057-1059: Christ enthroned, and the emperor standing with a drawn swordBoth sides of a gold histamenon of Isaac I Komnenos, struck at Constantinople in 1057-1059: Christ enthroned, and the emperor standing with a drawn swordImage: CNG · CC BY-SA 2.5
politics · Europe

Isaac I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine emperor

In 1057 the army commanders of Asia Minor, angered by the elderly emperor Michael VI, proclaimed the general Isaac Komnenos emperor and marched on Constantinople. After Isaac’s forces won a battle near Nicaea in August, Michael gave up the throne on 31 August, and on 1 September 1057 Isaac was crowned. He tried to restore the empire’s finances and army, but resigned two years later and became a monk; his nephew Alexios I later founded the long Komnenian dynasty.

Source: Dumbarton Oaks: Isaakios I Komnenos (1057-1059) ↗
III
A CHANGING WORLD

Early Modern Era

Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.

1715
Louis XIV and his heirs, a portrait attributed to Nicolas de Largillière: the young future Louis XV stands beside his governessLouis XIV and his heirs, a portrait attributed to Nicolas de Largillière: the young future Louis XV stands beside his governessImage: Formerly attributed to Nicolas de Largillière · Public domain
politics · Europe

Louis XIV dies and his five-year-old great-grandson becomes Louis XV

Louis XIV, the Sun King, had reigned for 72 years, longer than any other European monarch, but he outlived his son and his eldest grandson. When he died at Versailles on 1 September 1715, a few days before his 77th birthday, the crown passed to his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV. The next day Philippe, Duke of Orléans, had the Parlement of Paris set aside the old king’s will and made himself sole regent, governing France until 1723.

Source: Palace of Versailles: Death of Louis XIV, 1715 ↗
V
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1905
A banquet in Regina's town hall celebrating the inauguration of Saskatchewan as a province in 1905A banquet in Regina’s town hall celebrating the inauguration of Saskatchewan as a province in 1905Image: Unknown · Public domain
politics · Americas

Alberta and Saskatchewan become provinces of Canada

Settlers poured into the Canadian prairies at the start of the twentieth century, and the North-West Territories pressed for self-government. Parliament passed the Alberta Act and the Saskatchewan Act, which took effect on 1 September 1905, creating Canada’s eighth and ninth provinces. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier spoke at Alberta’s inauguration in Edmonton that day before a crowd of thousands; Saskatchewan’s ceremony in Regina followed on 4 September.

Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta: Alberta becomes a province ↗
1914
Martha, the last passenger pigeon, photographed alive at the Cincinnati ZooMartha, the last passenger pigeon, photographed alive at the Cincinnati ZooImage: William C. Herman · Public domain
world · Americas

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, dies at Cincinnati Zoo

Passenger pigeons once flew over North America in flocks of hundreds of millions, but hunting on a vast scale and the clearing of forests wiped them out in a few decades. By 1910 only one was left, a female named Martha at the Cincinnati Zoo. She died there on 1 September 1914, and her species became extinct. Her body was frozen in a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is still kept as a warning about extinction.

Source: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Martha, the last passenger pigeon ↗
1920
General Henri Gouraud proclaims the State of Greater Lebanon in Beirut on 1 September 1920General Henri Gouraud proclaims the State of Greater Lebanon in Beirut on 1 September 1920Image: Unknown · Public domain
politics · Middle East

France proclaims the State of Greater Lebanon

After the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the First World War, France took control of Syria and Lebanon, and in July 1920 its troops drove out the Arab kingdom of Emir Faisal in Damascus. On 1 September 1920, in Beirut, the French commander General Henri Gouraud proclaimed the State of Greater Lebanon, adding the coastal cities, the Bekaa valley and the south to the old autonomous district of Mount Lebanon, with Beirut as its capital. It became the Lebanese Republic in 1926.

Source: Lebanese Army (official site): Les relations franco-libanaises ↗
1923
The Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall in Yokoamichō Park, Sumida, built in memory of the victims of the 1923 earthquakeThe Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall in Yokoamichō Park, Sumida, built in memory of the victims of the 1923 earthquakeImage: Lcsschiller · CC BY-SA 4.0
world · Asia

The Great Kantō earthquake devastates Tokyo and Yokohama

By the 1920s Tokyo and the nearby port of Yokohama formed one of the largest urban areas in the world, crowded with wooden houses built close together. Japan sits where several plates of the Earth’s crust meet, and the region around Sagami Bay, south-west of the capital, had been shaken by great earthquakes before. At 11:58 am on 1 September 1923 an earthquake of about magnitude 7.9 struck beneath Sagami Bay. Buildings collapsed across the Kantō plain, a tsunami swept the coast, and because many households were cooking lunch on charcoal stoves, fires broke out everywhere and, driven by strong winds, burned for two days. Estimates of the dead range from about 105,000 to more than 140,000. In the chaos that followed, rumours led vigilantes to murder thousands of Korean residents. Tokyo was rebuilt with wider streets, parks and fire-resistant buildings, and 1 September is kept in Japan as Disaster Prevention Day.

Source: Britannica: Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake of 1923 ↗
1939
The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fires on the Polish military depot at Westerplatte, Danzig, at the start of the invasion of Poland in September 1939The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fires on the Polish military depot at Westerplatte, Danzig, at the start of the invasion of Poland in September 1939Image: Associated Press photographer · Public domain
world · Europe

Germany invades Poland and the Second World War begins in Europe

Through 1938 and 1939 Adolf Hitler had taken Austria, the Sudetenland and then the rest of Czechoslovakia without a fight. His next demand was for the Free City of Danzig and a route across the Polish Corridor to East Prussia. Poland refused, and Britain and France promised to stand by it. On 23 August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed a pact of non-aggression whose secret protocol divided eastern Europe between them, leaving Poland exposed on both sides. Before dawn on 1 September 1939, after staged ‘Polish attacks’ on the German border, about 1.5 million German troops crossed into Poland from the west, north and south, while the old battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the small Polish garrison at Westerplatte in Danzig. Bombers struck Polish airfields, railways and towns. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later, and on 17 September the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Warsaw surrendered at the end of the month, and Poland began more than five years of occupation in which millions of its citizens, among them almost all of its Jews, were killed.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Invasion of Poland, Fall 1939 ↗
1951
The emblem of the ANZUS alliance between Australia, New Zealand and the United StatesThe emblem of the ANZUS alliance between Australia, New Zealand and the United StatesImage: Archives New Zealand from New Zealand · CC BY-SA 2.0
politics · Oceania

Australia, New Zealand and the United States sign the ANZUS treaty

After the Second World War, Australia and New Zealand wanted an American guarantee of their security in the Pacific, especially as the United States prepared a lenient peace treaty with Japan. On 1 September 1951, in San Francisco, the three countries signed a security treaty pledging to consult and act together if any of them was attacked in the Pacific. ANZUS came into force in 1952; the United States suspended its obligations to New Zealand in 1986 after New Zealand banned nuclear-armed ships.

Source: Britannica: ANZUS Pact ↗
1952
The dust jacket of the first edition of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952The dust jacket of the first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952Image: Charles Scribner's Sons (jacket); photo via Heritage Auctions · Public domain
culture · Americas

Life magazine prints Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea in a single issue

By 1950 Ernest Hemingway’s reputation was at a low. His novel Across the River and Into the Trees had been mocked by many critics, and some said he was finished. At his home near Havana he wrote a short novel about Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman who has gone 84 days without a catch and then hooks a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, only to see sharks strip it to the bone on the way home. Life magazine bought the story and on 1 September 1952 published the whole book in one issue, the first time it had ever printed a complete book. More than five million copies sold within two days, and the book edition followed a week later. The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953, and it was singled out when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Source: JFK Presidential Library: Mary Welsh Hemingway, life with Ernest (1944-1953) ↗
1969
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi and Nureddin al-Atassi of Syria at an Arab summit in Libya in 1969, shortly after the revolutionGamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi and Nureddin al-Atassi of Syria at an Arab summit in Libya in 1969, shortly after the revolutionImage: Unknown · Public domain
politics · Africa

A bloodless coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power

Libya won its independence in 1951 as a kingdom under Idris I, the leader of the Sanusi religious order. The discovery of oil at the end of the 1950s made the poor desert country suddenly rich, but many younger army officers and townspeople resented the old king’s conservative rule, the foreign military bases on Libyan soil and his failure to stand with the Arab states during the war with Israel in 1967. On 1 September 1969, while Idris was in Turkey for medical treatment, a group of junior officers led by the 27-year-old Captain Muammar Gaddafi seized the government without bloodshed and proclaimed the Libyan Arab Republic. Gaddafi became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and commander of the armed forces. The king went into exile in Egypt, where he died in 1983. Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years, until he was overthrown and killed during the uprising of 2011.

Source: Britannica: Muammar al-Qaddafi ↗
1972
Bobby Fischer in 1972, the year he won the world chess championship in ReykjavikBobby Fischer in 1972, the year he won the world chess championship in ReykjavikImage: Bert Verhoeff for Anefo · CC0
sport · Europe

Bobby Fischer becomes world chess champion in Reykjavik

Soviet players had held the world chess championship without a break since 1948, and the American Bobby Fischer, brilliant and difficult, set out to end their reign. He crushed his challengers in 1971 and in July 1972 met the Soviet champion Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a match of 24 games, followed around the world as a Cold War contest. Fischer nearly wrecked it before it began, arriving late, losing the first game and forfeiting the second over complaints about the cameras. He then took control, winning the third game and several more. The 21st game was adjourned on 31 August with Spassky in a lost position, and on 1 September 1972, instead of resuming play, Spassky telephoned the arbiter to resign. Fischer won the match 12½ to 8½ and became the first American-born world champion. He never played another official game: in 1975 he gave up the title rather than defend it on terms he would not accept.

Source: US Chess Center: The lessons and legacy from Bobby Fischer’s 1972 world championship win ↗
1985
The bow of the RMS Titanic on the floor of the North Atlantic, photographed by the remotely operated vehicle Hercules in June 2004The bow of the RMS Titanic on the floor of the North Atlantic, photographed by the remotely operated vehicle Hercules in June 2004Image: NOAA / Institute for Exploration / University of Rhode Island · Public domain
science · Global

The wreck of the Titanic is found on the floor of the Atlantic

For more than seventy years after the Titanic sank in April 1912, no one knew exactly where it lay. It had gone down in water about 3,800 metres deep, far beyond the reach of divers, and earlier searches had failed. In the summer of 1985 a joint expedition of the French institute IFREMER, led by Jean-Louis Michel, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, led by Robert Ballard, set out to find it. Rather than hunt for the hull, the team towed a new camera sled called Argo just above the sea floor, looking for the long trail of debris the ship would have scattered as it sank. Just after 1 am on 1 September 1985 the cameras showed one of the Titanic’s boilers. The wreck lay in two main pieces about 350 nautical miles off Newfoundland. Ballard returned in 1986 with the submersible Alvin, and the discovery opened a new age of deep-sea exploration and of debate about how the wreck should be protected.

Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: 1985 discovery of RMS Titanic ↗
RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 1 September, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.

Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.

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