Moments in Time: Elvis Presley's undershorts
The History Channel
On Sept. 8, 2012, a pair of Elvis Presley's undershorts, which had been framed under glass, failed to sell at a British auction, though they'd been optimistically expected to go for more than $10,000.
On Sept. 9, 1942, a Japanese seaplane dropped incendiary bombs near Brookings, Oregon, in the first such attack on the U.S. mainland. The bombs were intended to start a forest fire, but fortunately caused little damage, due to wet conditions. Twenty years later, the pilot, Nobuo Fujita, visited Brookings in a gesture of reconciliation and friendship.
On Sept. 10, 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first short story collection, "Flappers and Philosophers." In a copy he sent to editor and critic H.L. Mencken, Fitzgerald labeled four of the stories "worth reading," one "amusing" and the remaining three "trash."
On Sept. 11, 1841, American portrait painter John Goffe Rand received a patent for the first collapsible tin paint tube. Until then, artists had to mix their own oil paints, storing leftover supplies in animal bladders tied with string. French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir later declared that "without paints in tubes there would have been no Cézanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro, nothing of ... Impressionism."
On Sept. 12, 1972, cowboy actor William Boyd, best known for his role as Hopalong Cassidy, died at the age of 77. He was the first cowboy actor to make the transition from movies to television, after more than 50 successful B-grade Westerns in which he was accompanied by his faithful and exceptionally intelligent horse, Topper,
On Sept. 13, 1940, Benito Mussolini's forces crossed the Libyan border into Egypt, achieving what "Il Duce" described as the glory Italy had been seeking for 300 years.
On Sept. 14, 1975, Elizabeth Ann Seton (née Bayley), who was raised Episcopalian but later converted to Catholicism after being left a widow with five children, was canonized by Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in Rome, becoming one of the first American-born Catholic saints.
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