26 September History
- 1580 - Sir Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, aboard the Golden Hind, after a 33-month voyage to circumnavigate the globe.
- 1777 - The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia.
- 1786 - France and Britain sign a trade agreement in London.
- 1820 - The legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone dies quietly at the Defiance, Mo., home of his son Nathan, at age 85.
- 1826 - The Persian cavalry is routed by the Russians at the Battle of Ganja in the Russian Caucasus.
- 1829 - Scotland Yard, the official British criminal investigation organization, is formed.
- 1864 - General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men assault a Federal garrison near Pulaski, Tennessee.
- 1901 - Leon Czolgosz, who murdered President William McKinley, is sentenced to death..
- 1913 - The first boat is raised in the locks of the Panama Canal.
- 1914 - The Federal Trade Commission is established to foster competition by preventing monopolies in business.
- 1918 - German Ace Ernst Udet shoots down two Allied planes, bringing his total for the war up to 62.
- 1937 - Bessie Smith, known as the 'Empress of the Blues,' dies in a car crash in Mississippi.
- 1940 - During the London Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Room suffers a hit when a bomb explodes on the Clive Steps.
- 1941 - The U.S. Army establishes the Military Police Corps.
- 1950 - General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter.
- 1955 - The New York Stock Exchange suffers a $44 million loss.
- 1960 - Vice President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy participate in the first nationally televised debate between presidential candidates.
- 1961 - Nineteen-year-old Bob Dylan makes his New York singing debut at Gerde's Folk City.
- 1967 - Hanoi rejects a U.S. peace proposal.
- 1969 - The Beatles last album, Abbey Road, is released.
- 1972 - Richard M. Nixon meets with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a U.S. President and a Japanese Monarch.
- 1977 - Israel announces a cease-fire on Lebanese border.
26 September Birthdays
- 1783 - Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), American pioneer.
- 1783 - Jane Taylor, children's writer best known as the author of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
- 1887 - Barnes Wallis, British aeronautical engineer who invented the "Bouncing Bombs" used to destroy German dams during World War II.
- 1888 - T.S. Eliot, poet, critic, and dramatist whose work includes The Waste Land and Murder in the Cathedral.
- 1898 - George Gershwin, composer who wrote many popular songs for musicals, along with his brother Ira.
- 1949 - Jane Smiley, novelist (A Thousand Acres, Moo).