This day in History – September 18

Sep 18, 2022 News

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Agricola youth, Shaquille Grant is laid to rest

Kaieteur News – The killing of 17-year -old Shaquille Grant of Lot 110 Caesar Street, Agricola, East Bank Demerara (EBD), had drawn nationwide attention when the police’s reason for killing the youth and injuring some of his friends, did not add up.

Grant was killed when police ranks entered the EBD community on September 11, 2012 and roughed up several youngsters they found sitting under a shed. They claimed to have been acting on information that the young men were plotting a robbery. With no evidence to substantiate their claims, the police quickly found themselves in hot water as eyewitnesses also contradicted versions of their story regarding what transpired on the day in question; including claims that Grant had tried to run from the law men.

Grant was buried on September 18. Statements made by the Government at the time, did not sit well with grieving members of the Agricola community who later blocked the EBD road for several hours in a fiery show of resistance. Grant’s mother sued the State for more than $20 M. The police rank who did the shooting went on the run, while another police rank was arrested. Another rank was later killed in a botched robbery on the East Coast of Demerara.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is passed in the US Congress

The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.

The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slaver and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the ‘Bloodhound Bill’, after the dogs that were used to track down people fleeing from slavery. The Act contributed to the growing polarisation of the country over the issue of slavery and was one of the key factors that led to the Civil War.

Operation Polo is terminated after the Indian Army accepts the surrender Hyderabad army

Operation Polo was a ‘Police action’ launched on 13th September, 1948 against the Nizam Ruled princely state of Hyderabad. After India gained Independence, all princely states were given the opportunity to either join India or Pakistan.

If any state wanted to remain independent, it could make a separate nation. Hyderabad wanted to be a separate nation and hence declared itself as an Independent nation. Hyderabad being landlocked centrally in India was seen as a future problem for which Sardar Patel held talks with Hyderabad. As the talks didn’t not show positive results and the Razakars militia in Hyderabad turned out to kill and loot the majority Hindu population. India was forced to launch ‘Operation Polo’ to save people of Hyderabad and annex Hyderabad into the Union Of India. The operation was termed as a police action but was a military operation led by Indian Armed Forces which finished as One United India with victory over Hyderabad on 18th September, 1948. (Source: historicalindia.org)

 Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations

On September 18, 1960, Castro led a delegation to New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly. He and his entourage caused an immediate sensation by deciding to stay at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem.

While there, Castro met with a number of African American leaders, including Malcolm X from the Nation of Islam and the poet Langston Hughes. On September 26, Castro delivered a blistering attack on what he termed American ‘aggression’ and ‘imperialism’. For over four hours, Castro lambasted U.S. policy toward Cuba and other nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The United States, he declared, had ‘decreed the destruction’ of his revolutionary Government. (Source: History)

Hurricane Fifi strikes Honduras killing more than 8,000 people

Hurricane Fifi (later known as Hurricane Orlene) was a catastrophic tropical cyclone that killed over 8,000 people in Honduras in September 1974, ranking it the third deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, only behind Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the 1780 hurricane.

Fifi is also the first billion-dollar hurricane known to make landfall in the U.S. Originating from a strong tropical wave on September 14, the system steadily tracked west-northwestward through the eastern Caribbean.

On September 16, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Fifi just off the coast of Jamaica. The storm quickly intensified into a hurricane the following afternoon and attained its peak intensity on September 18 as a strong Category 2 hurricane. Maintaining hurricane intensity, Fifi brushed the northern coast of Honduras before making landfall in Belize the following day. The storm quickly weakened after landfall, becoming a depression late on September 20. Continuing westward, the former hurricane began to interact with another system in the eastern Pacific.

First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks

The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax (a portmanteau of ‘America’ and ‘anthrax’, from its FBI case name), occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became “one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement”.

A major focus in the early years of the investigation was bioweapons expert Steven Hatfill, who was eventually exonerated. Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist at the Government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, became a focus around April 4, 2005. On April 11, 2007, Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that he was “an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks”. On July 29, 2008, Ivins committed suicide with an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol). Federal prosecutors declared Ivins the sole culprit on August 6, 2008, based on DNA evidence leading to an anthrax vial in his lab. Two days later, Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Rush D. Holt, Jr. called for hearings into the Department of Justice and FBI’s handling of the investigation. The FBI formally closed its investigation on February 19, 2010.

 

 

 

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