Date with History: September 19

A 5,300-year-old murder victim melts out of an Alpine glacier, and a sheep learns to fly.

One paperback for one calendar date: what happened on September 19, and who was born on it.

What happened on September 19

1991: Hikers Find Otzi the Iceman

German tourists Helmut and Erika Simon, walking in the Otztal Alps, took what they found for a recent mountaineering accident. It was a 5,300-year-old body preserved in glacial ice, with 61 tattoos over joints that look like pain treatment, a sophisticated copper axe, ibex meat and einkorn wheat still in the stomach, and an arrowhead in the shoulder. He has been called the world's oldest cold case.

1783: A Sheep, a Duck and a Rooster Fly at Versailles

The Montgolfier brothers demonstrated their balloon before Louis XVI, who had suggested using convicted criminals as passengers. They chose instead a sheep named Montauciel, a duck and a rooster, reasoning that the sheep's physiology resembled a human's and the birds served as controls. The balloon rose 1,500 feet and travelled two miles; all three survived, though the rooster was kicked by the sheep on landing.

Famous birthdays on September 19

1911 — William Golding
D-Day veteran and Nobel laureate who said the theme of Lord of the Flies was grief, grief, grief.

1928 — Adam West
Played Batman entirely straight in the campiest show on television, and made it work for sixty years.

Nearby dates

September 18 · September 20 · 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.