This is a list of selected September 26 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
Please note:
- Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
- Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
- An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
Francis Drake
The Statue of Sir Francis Drake in Plymouth, England
Golden Hind
The Parthenon
Yves Rossy
William II of England
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| European Day of Languages | Refimprove |
| 1789 – For his presidential administration, George Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson as the first US Secretary of State, John Jay as the first Chief Justice, Samuel Osgood as the first Postmaster General, and Edmund Randolph as the first Attorney General. | refimprove |
| 1810 – The Riksdag of the Estates adopted a new Act of Succession to regulate the right of members of the House of Bernadotte to accede to the Swedish throne. | refimprove |
| 1907 – Newfoundland and New Zealand became dominions within the British Empire. | Newfoundland has unreferenced section |
| 1914 – The Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United States government to promote consumer protection, was established. | unreferenced section |
| 1918 – World War I: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the bloodiest single battle in American history, began. | weasel words |
| 1933 – As gangster Machine Gun Kelly surrendered to the FBI, he supposedly shouted out, "Don't shoot, G-Men ['government men']!", which became a nickname for FBI agents. | refimprove section, date not cited |
| 1934 – The ocean liner RMS Queen Mary, now a museum ship in Long Beach, California, was launched in Clydebank, Scotland. | unreferenced section |
| 1957 – West Side Story, a musical written by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and based loosely on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, made its debut on Broadway. | refimprove sections, unreferenced section |
| 1960 – More than 70 million people watched US Senator John F. Kennedy and U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon in the first-ever televised US presidential election debate. | needs more footnotes, refimprove section |
Eligible
- 1087 – William II, son of William the Conqueror, was crowned King of England.
- 1687 – The Parthenon in Athens was partially destroyed during an armed conflict between the Venetians under Francesco Morosini and Ottoman forces.
- 1917 – First World War: The Battle of Polygon Wood, part of the Third Battle of Ypres, began near Ypres, Belgium.
- 1968 – The Beatles completed recording John Lennon's song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", regarded by band members as one of few true "Beatles" songs on the album The Beatles.
- 1983 – Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov averted a possible worldwide nuclear war by identifying what otherwise appeared to be an impending attack by the United States as a false alarm.
- 1983 – The racing yacht Australia II, captained by John Bertrand, won the America's Cup, ending the New York Yacht Club's 132-year defense of the trophy.
- 2008 – Swiss pilot and inventor Yves Rossy became the first person to fly a jet engine-powered wing across the English Channel.
- 2009 – Typhoon Ketsana struck the Philippines, the most devastating typhoon ever to hit Manila, before moving on to affect Southeast Asia.
- 2010 – Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove and three Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by members of the Taliban in the Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan.
September 26: Day of the National Flag in Ecuador (1860); Dominion Day in New Zealand (1907)
Golden Hind replica
- 1493 – Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Dudum siquidem, the last of the Bulls of Donation, marking the beginning of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
- 1580 – The Golden Hind (replica pictured) sailed into Plymouth, England, as explorer Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the globe.
- 1942 – The Holocaust: Nazi official August Frank issued a memorandum setting out how the belongings of murdered Jews were to be disposed of.
- 1959 – Japan was struck by Typhoon Vera, the strongest and deadliest typhoon on record to make landfall on the country with US$600 million in damages and over 4,000 deaths.
- 2002 – MV Le Joola, a Senegalese government-owned ferry, capsized off the coast of The Gambia, resulting in the deaths of at least 1,863 people.
More anniversaries: