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Billie Jean King triumphs in Battle of the Sexes
1973, in a highly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, top women’s player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men’s player. Riggs (1918-1995), a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn’t handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player. The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide.
2011- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed
On September 20, 2011, the federal government repeals “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a law that had allowed gay people to serve in the U.S. armed forces only if they kept their sexual orientation a secret.
1988- Greg Louganis wins gold medal day after suffering head injury
At the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea on September 20, 1988, American diver Greg Louganis wins the gold medal on the springboard despite nearly knocking himself unconscious during a qualifying round dive. With the improbable victory, Louganis—who won gold medals in the 3-meter springboard and 10-meter platform at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles—becomes the first man to win back-to-back gold medals in both events, solidifying his claim as the greatest diver ever.
1565- First European battle on American soil
Spanish forces under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés capture the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The French, commanded by Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, lost 135 men in the first instance of colonial warfare between European powers in America. Most of those killed were massacred on the order of Aviles, who allegedly had the slain hanged on trees beside the inscription “Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.” Laudonniere and some 40 other Huguenots escaped.
2012- Amish convicted in beard-cutting attacks
16 members of a dissident Amish group in Ohio are convicted of federal hate crimes and conspiracy for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of fellow Amish with whom they had religious differences.
