Local
2023: Sector V gets a pedestrian plaza on September 12. Situated between Infinity Benchmark and RDB Boulevard, the 50m stretch has tall crystal obelisks on both sides, with different kinds of lighting. The stretch is inaugurated by minister Firhad Hakim and becomes a popular hangout spot and selfie zone for techies as well as visitors.
National
1942: Freedom fighter Matangini Hazra is shot dead by British police on September 29. Hazra, 72, was leading a group of revolutionaries to capture Tamluk police station when she is gunned down in front of the station. Hazra was known as “Gandhi buri” for her Gandhian principals and becomes the first known martyr of the Quit India movement from Midnapore.
Matangini Hazra
1978: Valerian Gracias, an Indian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, dies in Bombay on September 11. Born in Karachi in 1900, Gracias served as a preacher and pastor and became the first Indian rector of Bombay’s Holy Name Cathedral. He served as Archbishop of Bombay from 1950 until his death at the age of 77, and was elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope Pius XII. He is later awarded the Padma Vibhushan too.
Valerian Gracias
2002: Hridayeshwar Singh Bhati is born in Jaipur on September 3. At the age of nine, he invents a six-player variant of chess, becoming the youngest patent-holder in India at that time. Thereafter, he receives patents for 12- and 60-player versions of his game. Bhati, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, also develops a ramp system enabling easy access to vehicles for the disabled. The boy dies of cardiac arrest at the age of 18.
Hridayeshwar Singh Bhati
Global
1783: Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, dies on September 18. The Swiss-born was also a physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, engineer who makes important discoveries in infinitesimal calculus, the studies of graph theory, topology etc. He introduces much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function and popularising the Greek letter Π (pi) to denote the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
Leonhard Euler
1947: The Mark II computer at Harvard University is found to be delivering errors consistently. A team of scientists opens up its hardware on September 9 and finds a moth stuck inside that had been disrupting the electronics. This incident is said to have given rise to the term “computer bug”, meaning flaw or glitch in a system.
Mark II computer
2008: Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy on September 15. The global financial services firm was the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, with some 25,000 employees worldwide. The bankruptcy filing is the largest in US history, making global markets plummet instantly and snowballs into the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
Sports, entertainment
1977: Dancer and choreographer Uday Shankar dies at the age of 76 on September 26. Shankar was a pioneer of modern dance in India, who despite no formal training, fused classical and folk forms with European ballet and theatrical techniques that he presented around the world. A Padma Vibhushan awardee, he was the elder brother of sitarist Ravi Shankar, husband of dancer Amala Shankar, and father of dancer and actress Mamata Shankar.
1982: Grace of Monaco suffers a cerebral haemorrhage while driving, loses control of her car, and succumbs to injuries on September 14 at the age of 52. Grace Kelly was an Oscar-winning American actress who went on to wed Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956. Her film career included Mogambo, that won her an Oscar, and three Alfred Hitchcock thrillers. As a Princess, Grace focused on charity work for children and the arts.
2004: A 23-member Sri Lankan handball team arrives in Germany in September for a friendly sports tournament, but appear to have neither skill nor knowledge of the game. The next morning, the entire delegation disappears, leaving behind all their belongings and a thank-you note for the Germans for their hospitality, saying they were headed to France. Sri Lankan officials later claim the country never had a national handball team at all.