Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in September 2017 for you to write about and make money from. The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time to find markets, and research and write your articles.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for September from The Date-A-Base Book 2017. There are 328 anniversaries for September in the book (more than six times more than listed here). The book covers the whole of 2017 from January to December and features more than 4,000 anniversaries in total.

If you need to work further ahead, Next Year’s News 2018 (the new name for the Date-A-Base Book series) is also available!

Just one published article should cover the cost of your copy many times over – and the book also explains how to get your anniversary articles and features published in newspapers and magazines, on radio and TV, and on paid sites online.

400 years ago (25 Sep 1617)
Death of Go-Yozei, Emperor of Japan (1586-1611).

300 years ago (24 Sep 1717)
Birth of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, British novelist and politician. Son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Known for The Castle of Otranto – regarded as the first Gothic novel. He built Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, London, which initiated the revival of the Gothic style in British architecture. He was also a prolific letter writer, and they are of significant political and social interest.

250 years ago (4 Sep 1767)
Death of Charles Townshend, British politician. Chancellor of the Exchequer (1766-67) whose taxation of imports into the British colonies in North America eventually led to the American Revolution.

200 years ago (5 Sep 1817)
Birth of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Count Tolstoy, important Russian poet, novelist and playwright. (Not to be confused with Leo Tolstoy – his second cousin.)

150 years ago (4 Sep 1867)
Sheffield Wednesday Football Club was founded in the UK.

150 years ago (21 Sep 1867)
Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister’s ground-breaking paper On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery was published in the medical journal The Lancet. It documented his successful use of carbolic acid (phenol) to sterilise operating theatres, dressings, wounds, surgeons’ gloves and surgical instruments, significantly reducing the rate of infection.

150 years ago (21 Sep 1867)
Birth of Henry L. Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War (1911-13, 1940-45), Governor-General of the Philippines (1927-29), Secretary of State (1929-33).

125 years ago (6 Sep 1892)
Birth of Sir Edward Appleton, British physicist and educator. Winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the Appleton layer of the ionosphere, which reflects radio waves and is useful in communication.

125 years ago (8 Sep 1892)
The original version of the USA’s Pledge of Allegiance was first published in the children’s magazine The Youth’s Companion. It was written by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy. (The current version dates from 1954.)

100 years ago (11 Sep 1917)
Birth of Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines (1965-86). Known for his authoritarian regime which was criticised for its corruption and the suppression of democracy.

100 years ago (27 Sep 1917)
Death of Edgar Degas, French Impressionist artist and sculptor.

100 years ago (30 Sep or 30 Jun 1917)
Birth of Buddy Rich, American jazz drum virtuoso and big band leader. Billed as ‘the world’s greatest drummer’.

90 years ago (7 Sep 1927)
American inventor Philo Farnsworth, aged 21, demonstrated the world’s first fully electronic television system in San Francisco, California. (He worked on a farm as a boy – the idea of scanning an image as a series of lines came from ploughing fields.)

90 years ago (18 Sep 1927)
The birth of CBS. The United Independent Broadcasters radio network (established in January 1927) was rescued by the Columbia Phonograph Company and renamed Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System. The name was soon shortened to Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).

80 years ago (21 Sep 1937)
J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit was published.

75 years ago (3 Sep 1942)
World War II: Jewish uprising in the Lakhva Ghetto, Belarus. Thought to be the first ghetto uprising of the war.

75 years ago (4 Sep 1942)
World War II: Compulsory Work Service was introduced in France. All able-bodied men aged 18 – 50 and single women aged 21 – 35 were required to make themselves available to work in Germany. The Germans would release 1 French prisoner-of-war for every 3 French workers who went to Germany.

75 years ago (9 Sep 1942)
World War II: a Japanese seaplane dropped incendiaries on Wheeler Ridge, Oregon, USA in a (failed) attempt to start forest fires. This was the first time an enemy aircraft bombed the U.S. mainland.

75 years ago (12 Sep 1942)
World War II: the Laconia Incident. The British troopship Laconia was hit by a German torpedo and sank off the coast of West Africa, killing around 1,400 men. This had far-reaching consequences as the ship was carrying 1,500 Italian prisoners-of-war. When the Germans realised this they launched a rescue mission, but were then bombed by the Americans, despite displaying the Red Cross flag.

75 years ago (19 Sep 1942)
Death of Condé Montrose Nast, American magazine publisher (Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and more).

70 years ago (18 Sep 1947)
The U.S. National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were established, the Department of Defense began operating, and the U.S. Air Force was established as a separate branch of the military.

65 years ago (6 Sep 1952)
Farnborough Air Show crash, Hampshire, UK. A de Havilland fighter jet broke apart and fell into the crowd, killing 31 people. Stringent safety measures were introduced to ensure this could never happen again.

65 years ago (6 Sep 1952)
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) launched its first television broadcasts, in Montreal.

60 years ago (4 Sep 1957)
Little Rock Crisis, Arkansas, USA. Nine black students enrolled at Little Rock Central High School. On 23rd September they were forced to withdraw because white mobs prevented them from entering. On 25th September U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent 300 National Guards to the school to enforce desegregation, which allowed the students to return. (In September 1958 the four high schools in the district closed for a year, preventing both black and white students from attending. The intention was that the buildings would be leased to private schools, side-stepping the ruling that public schools must be integrated. However, the schools remained closed for the full year – known as the ‘lost year’.)

60 years ago (9 Sep 1957)
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was enacted in the USA. It was the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since the Reconstruction era in 1875. The Act aimed to remove discrimination against non-white voters and to integrate public schools, but it proved difficult to enforce. (This led to the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which aimed to address the 1957 Act’s shortcomings.)

60 years ago (12 Sep 1957)
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was established.

50 years ago (1 Sep 1967)
Death of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, writer and soldier. One of the leading poets of WWI. Particularly known for his anti-war poetry and autobiographical works.

50 years ago (20 Sep 1967)
The British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 (better known as the QE2) was launched. (It was retired from active service in November 2008. There are plans to turn it into a luxury hotel.)

50 years ago (29 Sep 1967)
The first episode of the science fiction TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons was broadcast on ITV in the UK. Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, it used the same Supermarionation system of puppetry and scale models as their earlier series Thunderbirds.

50 years ago (30 Sep 1967)
The BBC reorganised its radio network: BBC Radio 1 was launched. The BBC Light Programme became BBC Radio 2. The BBC Third Programme and BBC Music Programme were merged and became BBC Radio 3. The BBC Home Service became BBC Radio 4.

40 years ago (5 Sep 1977)
NASA launched its Voyager 1 spacecraft (2 weeks after Voyager 2) on a mission to study the outer Solar System. On 18th September it sent back the first-ever photograph of the Earth and Moon together in a single image. In August 2012 it became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space (disputed). It is still operating and in communication with Earth.

40 years ago (12 Sep 1977)
Death of Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist. Founder of the Black Consciousness Movement. (He was arrested at a police roadblock on 18th August and died from injuries received while in police custody, leading to an international outcry. He became a martyr for South African black nationalism.)

30 years ago (26 Sep 1987)
The first episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation was broadcast in the USA. (UK: 26th September 1990.)

25 years ago (7 Sep 1992)
The radio station Classic FM began broadcasting in the UK.

25 years ago (12 Sep 1992)
Death of Anthony Perkins, American stage and film actor and singer. Best known for his role as Norman Bates in the Hitchcock thriller Psycho.

25 years ago (16 Sep 1992)
Black Wednesday sterling crisis. Britain crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), raised interest rates from 10% to 15%, and spent billions of pounds buying up sterling that was being frantically disposed of on international financial markets.

25 years ago (24 Sep 1992)
The Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) launched in the USA.

20 years ago (5 Sep 1997)
Death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Macedonian-born/Albanian Indian nun and humanitarian. Founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. Beatified October 2003.

20 years ago (5 Sep 1997)
Death of Georg Solti, Hungarian-born British conductor.

20 years ago (9 Sep 1997)
Sinn Fein formally renounced violence and committed itself to resolving the troubles in Northern Ireland through peaceful means.

20 years ago (11 Sep 1997)
In a referendum the people of Scotland voted to establish their own Parliament. (Opened 1st July 1999).

20 years ago (18 Sep 1997)
In a referendum the people of Wales voted to create the National Assembly for Wales, with devolved powers from Westminster. (Opened May 1999.)

20 years ago (19 Sep 1997)
Southall train disaster, west London, UK. An Intercity 125 passenger train crashed into a freight train that was being shunted across the line, after the driver missed 2 signals to stop. A warning system on the train was broken and an automatic braking system had been disabled as the driver was not trained to use it. 6 people were killed and more than 150 injured.

20 years ago (29 Sep 1997)
BSE (mad cow disease): British scientists announced that they had established a link between BSE and the human brain disease vCJD.

20 years ago (29 Sep 1997)
Death of Roy Lichtenstein, American artist. One of the founders of the Pop Art movement.

10 years ago (3 Sep 2007)
Death of Jane Tomlinson, British charity campaigner who undertook a series of athletic fundraising challenges after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

10 years ago (6 Sep 2007)
Death of Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor.

10 years ago (10 Sep 2007)
Death of Dame Anita Roddick, British cosmetics manufacturer and retailer, and social, environmental and animal rights activist. Founder of The Body Shop chain. (Hepatitis C.)

10 years ago (22 Sep 2007)
Death of Marcel Marceau, French mime artist and actor (Bip the clown).

10 years ago (29 Sep 2007)
The world’s first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Cumbria, UK, was demolished. It operated from 1956 to 2003.

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