Sunday · September 27, 2026
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19141776 Club

Wilson signs the Federal Trade Commission into existence

A new agency gets civil power to police unfair competition, two and a half years after a freshman Oklahoma congressman first proposed it.

Three years after the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil, Washington still had no standing body to police how companies competed day to day. On September 26, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act, weeks after the Senate passed it 43-5 and the House approved it without even a recorded tally. The law created an independent commission empowered to challenge "unfair methods of competition" and absorb the old Bureau of Corporations. It would not open its doors for another six months…

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More from September 26
1983

A Soviet screen shows five U.S. missiles inbound; the duty officer calls it a glitch

Stanislav Petrov had no proof the alarm was false, only a hunch that a real attack would look different.
1918

2,711 guns open fire before dawn as America's biggest offensive begins

The barrage alone cost about a million dollars a minute, before a single soldier crossed the wire.
1789

Washington names Jefferson to head a department that does not yet exist in practice

The Virginia planter fresh off five years in Paris becomes the nation's first Secretary of State.
17771776 Club
Washington, outmaneuvered after Brandywine and Paoli, cannot stop the British from taking the rebel capital.
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More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1892

A new pledge, timed to fifteen seconds, goes into classrooms nationwide

Francis Bellamy's oath debuts in The Youth's Companion, built for Columbus Day observances in schools across the country.
1901

Roosevelt takes the oath in a borrowed library; at 42, he is the youngest president yet

McKinley died that morning; by afternoon Judge John Hazel had sworn in his successor at Ansley Wilcox's house.
1881

Arthur takes the oath before dawn, in his own parlor

A New York judge administers the presidency at 2:15 in the morning, hours after Garfield dies of his wounds.
1908

First production Model T leaves the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit

Twenty horsepower, vanadium steel, and a price aimed square at the middle class.
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