Today in History, September 6th
On September 6, 1522, the Victoria returned to Spain, completing the first voyage around the world. Plus McKinley shot and Ripken's record.
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September 6 is best known for 1522, when the battered ship Victoria limped into port in Spain, completing the first voyage around the world. The date also saw President William McKinley shot in 1901 and Cal Ripken Jr. break Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games record in 1995.
The big story: Magellan’s expedition completes the first trip around the world (1522)
Ferdinand Magellan left Spain on September 20, 1519, with five ships and about 270 men. The plan was to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. The trip was brutal. The fleet put down a mutiny in Patagonia, spent 38 days threading the strait at the bottom of South America that now bears Magellan’s name, then crossed the Pacific in 99 days with food so scarce that sailors reportedly chewed leather. Magellan himself never made it home. He was killed in a fight on the Philippine island of Mactan in April 1521. Basque navigator Juan Sebastián de Elcano took charge and pushed on through the Moluccas, across the Indian Ocean and around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, dodging Portuguese ships along the way. On September 6, 1522, the Victoria, the last of the five ships, reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda with Elcano and 21 others aboard. They had proven, at enormous cost, that a ship could sail all the way around the globe.
More events on September 6
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1781 | Benedict Arnold, by then fighting for the British, ordered his troops to burn New London, Connecticut. |
| 1847 | Henry David Thoreau left his cabin at Walden Pond and moved in with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s family. |
| 1901 | President William McKinley was shot by an assassin. |
| 1914 | The First Battle of the Marne began as French and British forces struck the advancing Germans in World War I. |
| 1966 | South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the chief architect of apartheid, was assassinated in Cape Town. |
| 1975 | Czechoslovak tennis star Martina Navratilova, 18, asked for political asylum in the U.S. |
| 1995 | Cal Ripken Jr. played his 2,131st straight game, breaking Lou Gehrig’s long-standing record. |
| 1997 | An estimated 2.5 billion people watched the televised funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. |
| 2007 | Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti died in Modena, Italy. |
| 2019 | Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe as prime minister and then president from 1980 to 2017, died in Singapore. |
Born on September 6
- 1757: Marquis de Lafayette, French nobleman who served as a general for the Americans in the Revolutionary War, born in Chavaniac, France.
- 1860: Jane Addams, social reformer, cofounder of Chicago’s Hull House and Nobel Peace Prize winner, born in Cedarville, Illinois.
- 1972: Idris Elba, British actor known for The Wire and Luther, born in London.
Sources
- Magellan’s expedition circumnavigates globe, History.com
- This Day in History: September 6, History.com
- On This Day: September 6, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Luciano Pavarotti, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Robert Mugabe, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Marquis de Lafayette, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Jane Addams, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Idris Elba, Encyclopaedia Britannica
