Daily List

Today in History, September 10th

On September 10, 1813, Oliver Hazard Perry won the Battle of Lake Erie. Plus Elias Howe's sewing machine patent and the Large Hadron Collider.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published September 10, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

September 10 is best known for 1813, when Oliver Hazard Perry’s fleet beat a British squadron at the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. The date also saw Elias Howe patent his sewing machine in 1846 and the Large Hadron Collider make its first test run in 2008.

The big story: Perry wins the Battle of Lake Erie (1813)

A year into the War of 1812, the British held Detroit and the Great Lakes were up for grabs. On September 10, 1813, U.S. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry took nine ships into battle against six British warships on Lake Erie. It did not start well. Perry’s flagship, the Lawrence, was shot to pieces. Rather than give up, Perry moved to the Niagara, steered it back into the British line and turned the fight around. American losses were 27 killed and 96 wounded, and the British lost 40 killed and 94 wounded. Afterward Perry sent Gen. William Henry Harrison a famously short report: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The win had real consequences. With the lake in American hands, the British had to give up Detroit, and the U.S. secured its hold on Lake Erie and the Northwest Territory. Perry’s one-line dispatch became one of the best-known messages in American military history.

More events on September 10

Year	What happened
1608	John Smith became president of the council at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America (Old Style).
1846	Elias Howe received a patent for his sewing machine.
1919	Austria and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain, formally ending World War I between them.
1935	Italian immigrant Ettore “Hector” Boiardi received a patent for a factory machine that cooked spaghetti.
1955	The TV western Gunsmoke began airing on CBS.
1977	Hamida Djandoubi, executed in Marseille, became the last person put to death by guillotine in France.
1981	Pablo Picasso’s antiwar painting Guernica went on display in Spain.
1988	Steffi Graf won the U.S. Open to complete tennis’s Grand Slam, the first woman to do it since Margaret Court in 1970.
1991	Nirvana released “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a single.
2008	The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Europe was switched on for the first time.
2025	Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a university campus in Utah.

Born on September 10

1929: Arnold Palmer, American golfer whose bold style won him a huge following, born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
1934: Roger Maris, baseball player whose 61 home runs in 1961 stood as the single-season record until 1998, born in Hibbing, Minnesota.
1935: Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet of nature, born in Maple Heights, Ohio.