Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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19251776 Club

A thunderstorm tears the Navy airship Shenandoah into three pieces over Ohio

Fourteen aboard die, including the commander who had warned this kind of weather was dangerous and asked that the flight be delayed.

Before dawn on September 3, 1925, the Navy airship USS Shenandoah was crossing Noble County, Ohio, on a promotional tour of Midwest state fairs when it flew into a violent squall line. An updraft carried the 680-foot helium ship past the structural limits of its gas bags, and the hull tore apart in midair. It came down in three separate pieces near Caldwell, Ohio. Fourteen of the forty-three men aboard were killed, including Commander Zachary Lansdowne, while twenty-nine survivors rode the broken sections down to the hillsides below…

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More from September 3
1783

Peace is signed at the Hôtel d'York; the United States is free and independent

Eight years of war end with four signatures in a rented Paris hotel room.
1976

Viking 2 sets down on Mars, tilted on a rock at Utopia Planitia

A stray radar echo fires the thrusters early, cracking the ground beneath the lander's feet.
1777

Musket fire greets Hessian dragoons at Cooch's Bridge; some say the Stars and Stripes flew over the fight

Some who were there later said this was the first time the Stars and Stripes flew over American troops in a fight.
18611776 Club
Residents wave rebel flags at the landing, but the bishop-general has just handed the state to the Union.
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More from The World Wars
1932

The Dow closes at 41.22; ninety cents of every dollar are gone

Three summers of selling, and still no floor in sight.
1944

Saipan falls to Smith's Marines and infantry; Japan's inner defense ring is broken

Twenty-four days through caves, cane fields, and Tapotchau's slopes: 3,100 Americans dead, 13,000 wounded, and roughly 30,000 Japanese killed.
1942

Navy pilot spots a downed Zero on Akutan Island; the U.S. has its first intact enemy fighter

Bill Thies, flying a PBY, finds Petty Officer Koga's crashed Zero upside down in the mud, a month after it went down during the Dutch Harbor attack.
1943

Roosevelt signs a monument into existence for Carver; no Black American has been honored this way before

The site near Diamond, Missouri, where Carver was born into slavery, becomes the first national monument built to honor a private citizen.
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