On Sept. 24, 1755, John Marshall, who would become the fourth chief justice of the United States, was born near Germantown, Va.
In 1869 financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market, sending Wall Street into a panic and leaving thousands of investors in financial ruin.
In 1896 author F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul.
In 1900 Stephen Bechtel, who founded what would become Bechtel Corp., was born in Aurora, Ind.
In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill establishing Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument.
In 1929 Lt. James Doolittle piloted a Consolidated NY2 biplane over Mitchel Field in New York in the first “blind,” or all-instrument, flight.
In 1934 Babe Ruth made his farewell appearance as a regular player with the New York Yankees in a game against the Boston Red Sox. (The Sox won 5-0.)
In 1969 the “Chicago Eight” went on trial on charges of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1996 the U.S. and the world’s other major nuclear powers signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.
In 1998 new $20 bills redesigned to be harder to counterfeit went into circulation.
In 2001 President George W. Bush froze the assets of 27 suspected terrorists and terrorist groups.
In 2002 British Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that Iraq had a growing arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and planned to use them, as he disclosed an intelligence dossier to a special session of Parliament.
In 2003 Tony-winning playwright Herb Gardner (“A Thousand Clowns,” “I’m Not Rappaport”) died in New York; he was 68.
In 2005 Vice President Dick Cheney had surgery to repair aneurysms on the back of both knees.
