September dates in Virginia history

September 2, 1752
Britain and its American colonies, including Virginia, adopt the Gregorian Calendar replacing the old Julian Calendar.

September 4, 1908
Orville Wright makes the first airplane flight in Virginia at Fort Myer in Arlington County. Five days later Wright takes off from Fort Myer with a companion onboard in the world's first-ever passenger flight.

September 8, 1932
Country music star Patsy Cline is born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester.

September 9, 1861
Sally Louisa Tompkins becomes the only woman commissioned as an officer in the Confederate military. Tompkins was a hospital administrator who fought to keep her Richmond hospital open after the government ordered to all hospitals not run by the military to close. To allow the efficient facility to remain open, President Jefferson Davis made Tompkins a cavalry captain.

September 9, 1958
Public schools in Virginia open for the 1958–59 school year in the midst of Massive Resistance. Schools in Charlottesville, Warren County, and Norfolk face federal court orders to integrate. At the same time, these schools face Virginia state laws that could remove them from the state educational system if they do so.

September 11, 2001
Five hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. All 64 people on board the aircraft, including the hijackers, were killed, as were 125 people in the building.

September 12, 1940
The SS Quanza, a Portuguese vessel carrying eighty Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, is allowed to dock at Norfolk. The refugees eventually receive visas through the assistance of Eleanor Roosevelt, thus saving them from return to Europe and possible death.

September 17,1908
Lieutenant Selfridge dies while flying as Orville Wright's passenger during a demonstration at Fort Myer, making him the world's first fatality of an airplane accident.

September 19, 1676
Nathaniel Bacon and his men capture Jamestown and order the town burned. Governor William Berkeley and his followers are forced to flee to the Eastern Shore.

September 23, 1806
The members of the Lewis and Clark expedition arrive in St. Louis, having completed a 7,000-mile journey to the Pacific Ocean and back.

September 24, 1755
John Marshall, later chief justice of the United States and first president of the Virginia Historical Society, is born in Prince William County in an area that is now part of Fauquier County.

September 25, 1789
The U.S. Congress submits the Bill of Rights—the first ten Constitutional amendments—to the state legislatures. The Bill of Rights is largely based on George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, written in 1776. Virginia ratifies the U.S. Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791.

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