Sunday · September 27, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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Owens takes his fourth gold in Berlin, in the stadium built for Nazi propaganda

The 4x100 relay victory capped a week that undercut the Nazi message the Games were built to send.

Hitler had wanted the 1936 Games to showcase Aryan supremacy to the world, in a stadium built for exactly that message. Instead, Jesse Owens, a sharecropper's son from Alabama, won the 100 meters, the 200 meters, and the long jump, then ran the 4x100 relay for his fourth gold on August 9. Owens became the meet's most successful athlete outright. Hitler, who had already stopped greeting any medalists after being told to greet all or none, left the stadium without acknowledging Owens's wins…

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More from August 9
1945

Bockscar drops a second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki

A broken fuel pump nearly forced the mission to abort before the plane ever reached its target.
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Bambi's loan runs out; the Forest Service names a bear of its own

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In the dark off Guadalcanal, Mikawa's cruisers sink four Allied warships in under an hour

Then, fearing carriers that had already left, the Japanese admiral turns north and leaves the invasion transports untouched.
18621776 Club
Nathaniel Banks attacked at two-to-one odds; A.P. Hill's division arrived just in time to save Jackson's line.
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More from The World Wars
1942

Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns

Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
1942

Congress makes the Pledge of Allegiance official, fifty years after a magazine wrote it

The wording, unchanged from Bellamy's 1892 Columbus Day campaign, is now federal law, with the United States seven months into war.
1944

Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act; veterans to get mortgages, tuition, and a year's pay

Congress voted unanimously, sixteen days after D-Day, with the WWI bonus debacle and the 1932 Bonus Army march still fresh in every lawmaker's memory.
1945

Flag rises on Okinawa; Ushijima and his chief of staff are dead by their own hand

Eighty-two days of cave fighting, monsoon rain, and kamikaze attacks end with organized Japanese resistance broken and ninety miles of runway in Allied hands.
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