SEPTEMBER 8 — 1664 New Amsterdam becomes New York; 1859 Subterranean Oil discovered in Pennsylvania; 2016 Cam Newton breaks record with 44th rushing touchdown
SEPTEMBER 8
1863 –Second Battle of Sabine Pass.
…Union Gen. William B. Franklin V Richard Dowling. The result: Decisive Confederate Victory, in fact the most lopsided loss for the Union during the entire war. Franklin had four gunboats, 18 transports and nearly 6,000 troops. He was sent by Nathaniel Banks to take back Sabine Pass at the Texas-Louisiana border. The Confederates, led by General John Bankhead Magruder, had taken Gavelston in Texas as well as Sabine Pass earlier that year. Now Banks wanted it back, and sent Franklin to retake it. The Confederates has just constructed Fort Griffin at Sabine Pass, equipped with six cannon, two 24-pounders, and four 32-pounders.
There, Lt. Dick Dowling commanded 44 gunners who practiced firing cannon when they got bored. Luckily for Dowling, their practice paid off when the Union charged into the pass. Franklin didn’t have a chance. The Union was quickly overwhelmed The first two gunboats through the channel were hit hard by cannon and ran aground. The transports didn’t do much better. In fact the Clifton transport got shot right in the boiler, causing steam and smoke through the ship and forced them to . The Yankees lost over 200 men, mostly captured. The Union was humiliated and Nathanial Banks was a Confederate hero.
1970 – We lose a great American as Percy Spencer passes away. He invented the microwave oven. I don’t want my food in 40 minutes I’m an American and I want it now! Spencer worked at Raytheon. They have a facility named after him in Massachusetts with one of the original prototypes sitting in the main lobby.
1859 – “Discovery of Subterranean Fountain of Oil” are the Headlines on the New York Tribune.
Edwin Laurentine Drake, born March 29, 1819 in Greenville New York, would become America’s first oil driller, though an educated engineer he definitely wasn’t. He had a very simple school education actually, and when he was in his mid-30s he along with his wife and child settled in New Haven, CT. He pursued various jobs in the railroad industry, including a conductor which is cool because he got to say choo choo while he was at work.
He met a couple petroleum investors named George Bissell and Jonathan Eveleth, who needed someone to check on their oil-rich properties in Titusville PA. Oil in those days wasn’t really used for much except for lighting a kerosene lamp or as medicinal purposes like the Native Americans did. Drake, though relatively young, developed some kind of illness that would keep him from working his job as a train conductor, but still enjoyed the benefits of being a conductor, such as free travel by train.
This free travel got Drake the job for his new oil investor friends, and that is how Edwin Drake moved his family to Titusville. Though he’d never served days in his life in the military, Eveleth called Drake “Colonel”, perhaps to try and give him some clout in a sleepy town of Titusville, population 250, many of them lumberjacks. The fake title didn’t help; the townspeople still didn’t respect Drake. Plus he didn’t know what he was doing. Oil was easy to get on the surface but to collect it was difficult and time consuming. Drake didn’t have to be an engineer in order to think to himself: What if we just use a drill? You know, like with rock salt drilling? Once again, the townspeople of Titusville mocked Edwin Drake, saying his efforts for drilling for oil were futile.
It was called Drake’s folly, actually. They could only drill a couple feet per day. Nothing there. Maybe the townsfolk were right. Maybe Drake was just an idiot. At 69 feet there was still nothing. Not until it went down to 69 and half feet, on August 27 1859, that oil began to seep upwards. Welcome to the Boomtown. Seemingly overnight, Titusville’s population went from 250 to 10,000. More than fifty hotels and three churches surrounding towns were springing up from absolute nowhere. Drake drilled two more holes for Eveleth and Bissell, showing the world how he revolutionized the way oil comes out of the ground. His new empire would make him and the next unlimited generations wealthier than their wildest dreams right?
Then how come most people have never heard of Edwin Drake? Because he neglected to patent his invention. Drake didn’t get a penny. Worse, his condition grew, and he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his short miserable life, accomplishing nothing. Penniless, he moved from PA to New York to Vermont then back to PA, where he got the state to agree to give him a pension. These days, Edwin Drake’s invention is nonetheless honored both at his tomb in Titusville, also the Drake Well Museum features a replica of his oil rig and engine house.
1664 – New Amsterdam becomes New York after Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrenders the town to the English. It was named after the Duke of York, who organized the mission.
1858 – Abraham Lincoln supposedly says You can fool some of the people, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.
1986 – Oprah goes national. Born January 29, 1954 in a rural Mississippi town, Oprah Winfrey moved in 1976 to Baltimore to host a TV talk show called People are Talking. She moved to Chicago in 1984 and turned a low rated talk show into a huge success. On September 8, 1986 she went national and would become the highest-rated talk show in TV history. The Oprah Winfrey Show would air for 25 years.
By 2008, her show had an estimated 46 million viewers in the country and was broadcast around the world in 134 countries. Everything Oprah touch seemed to turn to gold, any book, TV show, movie, or just about anything else for that matter that was mentioned or promoted by Oprah was an instant hit. My wife says Oprah’s the best person on the planet. So there.
1966—Star Trek airs for the first time. It went on for 79 episodes. That’s all I really need to say about Star Trek, you either love it so much you know everything about it already or you couldn’t care less. Not much of a gray area there.
1978 – Boston Massacre part 2. Yankees beat the Red Sox 13-2. 1993 Houston’s Darryl Kile throws 3rd no-hitter of season in 7-1 win over Mets.
2016 – Cam Newton breaks records his 44th rushing touchdown.
But then again, Cameron Jarrell Newton has been doing that since his rookie years as a Carolina Panther. In fact, Cam threw for 400 yards in his very first NFL game in 2011, blowing out Peyton Manning’s debut record of 120 yards. He would finish his rookie season with 4,000 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns, beating Steve Grogan’s record from 35 years back.
In 2015, Cam would lead the Panthers to an unforgettable 15-1 season and trip to the Super Bowl, where the New England Patriots would win 24-10. In his next season, on this day in 2016 against the Denver Broncos, Cam would beat Steve Young’s old record of rushing and passing for touchdowns, for the 32nd game.
Young’s record was 31 games of rushing and passing for touchdowns. In his 169th game, he ran one in from the 2-yard line to get his 44th NFL career touchdown, tying Otto Graham’s record from the early 1950s before the NFL merger.