Date with History: September 18

Chile's first junta, CBS's first broadcast, and the night Jimi Hendrix died in London.

One paperback for one calendar date: what happened on September 18, and who was born on it.

What happened on September 18

1810: Chile Forms Its First Governing Junta

With the king of Spain imprisoned by Napoleon, Chilean leaders established a junta that still nominally acknowledged Spanish authority while starting the country down the road to full independence, achieved in 1818. September 18 is now Chile's national day. Fiestas Patrias officially runs two days and in practice about a week, built around cueca dancing, rodeos, kite-flying and enormous quantities of empanadas.

1927: CBS Goes on the Air

Sixteen radio stations linked as the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System, a name soon mercifully shortened. Nobody recorded the first night's programming, so what was actually broadcast is lost, but the idea behind it was not: content reaching millions of people at the same moment. That network would go on to carry Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Lucille Ball.

Famous birthdays on September 18

1905 — Greta Garbo
Retired at 36 at the peak of her fame and spent fifty years declining every offer to come back.

1709 — Samuel Johnson
Wrote the first English dictionary that mattered, and defined oats as a grain fed to horses in England.

Nearby dates

September 17 · September 19 · All September dates

Part of Date with History, a 366-book collection with one book for every date of the year. 5″×8″ paperback, cream paper.

Historical selections are editorially researched. This is a date-specific book, not a personalized or custom-made product.