Sunday · September 27, 2026

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American history, reported as it happened

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The events of September 17 · Read the full edition → · More from September 17 →

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Team owners meet in a car showroom, form a league to stop poaching players

Jim Thorpe is elected president of an association that will not be called the NFL for two more years.

Professional football in 1920 had a reputation for raiding rosters and paying college players under fake names. On September 17, delegates from teams in Ohio, Indiana, New York, and Illinois gathered at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, managed by Ralph Hay, and organized the American Professional Football Association, electing Jim Thorpe as its first president. Fourteen teams would field squads that season; only the Decatur Staleys and the Racine Cardinals still exist in the league today, as the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals…

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More from September 17

Along a Maryland creek, the single bloodiest day in American history

Lee's invasion stalls near Sharpsburg as Union and Confederate armies trade nearly 23,000 casualties in twelve hours.

Harriet Tubman slips away from a Maryland plantation, bound for Pennsylvania

Her brothers Ben and Henry start north with her, then turn back; she keeps walking alone.

The Constitution is signed at Independence Hall; the convention adjourns

Three delegates refuse to sign, but 39 others put their names to the new frame of government.

Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell are among the pilots and engineers chosen to fly Gemini and Apollo.

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More from The World Wars

The Enola Gay drops the first atomic bomb used in war on Hiroshima

Three-quarters of the city is gone within seconds; the pilot named the plane for his mother.

A German airship lifts off from New Jersey to fly around the world

Hearst money bought the trip; a New Jersey field bought its start and finish.

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.

Bambi's loan runs out; the Forest Service names a bear of its own

Disney's Bambi was only on loan for a year. When the deal ran out, the Forest Service needed a mascot of its own.

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