19. September

Cornered on a second raid, the Black Prince’s army of about 6,000 beat a French army perhaps twice its size among the hedges and vineyards south-east of Poitiers. King John II was captured with his youngest son Philip, who had stood beside him calling out warnings. The Duke of Bourbon and the…

The Cité of Limoges had gone over to the French, and the Black Prince, too ill to ride and carried in a litter, took it back by mining its walls. Froissart has 3,000 men, women and children put to the sword; historians working from other evidence think the dead were far fewer, perhaps a few…

At Pascal’s request, his brother-in-law Florin Périer carried a mercury tube up the mountain. At the summit the mercury stood about 8 centimetres lower than in Clermont: there is less air above a mountain.

Never delivered as a speech: it was printed in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser. By stepping down after two terms Washington set the custom that held until 1940 and became law in 1951.

He signed the Pendleton Act of 1883, which began hiring federal workers by competitive examination rather than party patronage.

He had been moved to a seaside cottage on the New Jersey shore, on a rail spur laid for the purpose, in the hope that the sea air would help. Chester Arthur took the oath at his New York house at about 2:15 the next morning.

Lucy sleeps fitfully and, weaker, is afraid to sleep. Van Helsing and Seward take turns at the bed while Quincey Morris patrols the house all night without saying why. By day she can hardly turn her head.

The Legislative Council passed it 20 to 18 after two members switched sides in anger at Premier Seddon’s attempt to kill it, and the Governor, Lord Glasgow, signed it on 19 September. Māori and Pākehā women could vote, but not stand for Parliament until 1919. At the election on 28 November about…

German shells set fire to the scaffolding and the straw laid inside for wounded prisoners; the roof burned and the lead ran from the gargoyles. The martyred cathedral became the image of the war in French propaganda.

Allenby broke the Ottoman line on the coast and sent his cavalry, many of them Indian lancers, through the gap to cut off two Ottoman armies. On 23 September the Jodhpur and Mysore Lancers charged into Haifa.

Strapped in a JIM pressure suit to the front of a submersible, Earle was carried down to 381 m off Oʻahu, unclipped and walked the seafloor alone for over two hours. It is still the deepest untethered walk by a woman.

Looking one last time at why his method failed, Wiles saw that it failed for a reason that would make an approach he had abandoned three years earlier, Iwasawa theory, work. It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant. — Wiles, NOVA

Refereeing the 200-page manuscript, Katz asked a question that turned out to be a real flaw: a construction Wiles needed, an Euler system, did not work as claimed. Wiles spent a year trying to fix it while the world waited.

Using a Depression-era currency fund, the Treasury insured money market funds against loss. The same morning the SEC banned short selling in 799 financial stocks and Paulson said he would ask Congress to buy the bad assets.

In a Tour moved to September by the pandemic, the 21-year-old began the last-but-one day’s mountain time trial 57 seconds behind his countryman Primož Roglič and ended it 59 seconds ahead.