Today in Nebraska for September

Sept. 1

1890 - A Populist Party picnic drew 20,000 people to Cushman Park in Lincoln.

Sept. 2

1944 - George W. Norris, who represented Nebraska in Congress for most of the first half of the 20th century, died of a brain hemorrhage in McCook.

1977 - The Nebraska Energy Office was created.

Sept. 3

1855 - Army troops attacked a Brule Sioux village along Bluewater Creek in present-day Garden County, killing 86 American Indians and capturing about 70 others in the Battle of Ash Hollow.

1872 - The Burlington & Missouri railroad linked with the Union Pacific railroad at Kearney Junction near modern-day Kearney.

Sept. 4

1876 - The Covington, Columbus and Black Hills Railroad completed its track to Ponca from Covington, a town later consolidated with South Sioux City.

1927 - WOW radio in Omaha, the first station to join the NBC network, broadcast its first network program.

Sept. 5

1860 - The transcontinental telegraph line from St. Joseph, Mo., to San Francisco reached Omaha.

1877 - Crazy Horse, the great Sioux Indian leader, was killed at Fort Robinson.

1902 - Movie producer Daryl F. Zanuck was born in Wahoo.

Sept. 6

1828 - George Crook, who would head the U.S. Army’s Division of the Platte many years later, was born near Taylorsville, Ohio.

1925 - The first Lutheran service was held in Ogallala in a church rented from the Episcopalians.

Sept. 7

1804 - The Lewis and Clark expedition left Nebraska and entered what is now South Dakota.

1871 - The first classes were held at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

1946 - The number of polio cases in the state broke the old single-year record of 287 in 1930. Ultimately in 1946, 639 cases of polio and 53 deaths were recorded.

Sept. 8

1972 - Meeting in Auburn, officials from Otoe, Nemaha and Richardson counties said they wanted to align with the Lincoln Technical College, the forerunner of Southeast Community College.

1979 - The Burlington Northern Railroad celebrates the opening of a new maintenance center in Alliance.

Sept. 9

1878 - Five firefighters died battling a fire at the Grand Central Hotel in Omaha.

1960 - Gov. Ralph Brooks, who was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate, died.

Sept. 10

1953 - The Agriculture Department trims its estimate of Nebraska’s average corn yield to 27 bushels per acres from an estimate of 32 per acre a month earlier. The lower estimate reflected the heat and drought that hit the crop in August.

1979 - A 36-year-old Kearney man was critically injured after being covered with corn in a grain hopper. He later died.

Sept. 11

1979 - U.S. District Judge Albert G. Schatz in Omaha dismissed a suit by the Oglala Sioux Indian Tribe that sought restoration of the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Sept. 12

Base Hospital No. 49, operated largely by University of Nebraska College of Medicine faculty and alumni, opened in Allereye, France, in the waning days of World War I.

Sept. 13

1972 - Gov. Jim Exon endorses budget increases to improve facilities and programs at the Beatrice State Home.

Sept. 14

1920 - Ak-Sar-Ben Field racetrack was dedicated in Omaha and the first horse race was run.

Sept. 15

1900 - The first Burlington railroad train arrived in Sidney.

1951 - State prison inmate Kenneth Kitts, at the federal courthouse in Omaha to testify at a hearing, went into a restroom and slipped away from his guard. FBI agents recaptured Kitts a week later in Fayetteville, Tenn.

Sept. 16

1972 - Plans were announced for a $1.25 million Holiday Inn complex in Columbus.

Sept. 17

1867 - The first lots were sold in the new capital, Lincoln.

1930 - Four men robbed the Lincoln National Bank and Trust Co., pulling off one of the biggest bank heists in history.

1944 - Nine sailors were killed and 47 people were hurt in an explosion at the Naval ordnance depot in Hastings that tossed railroad cars 150 feet into the air.

Sept. 18

1873 - Gov. Robert Furnas asked leading citizens to meet concerning drought, and the Relief and Aid Society was formed.

1877 - Outlaw Sam Bass and his gang stopped a Union Pacific train at Big Springs and took thousands of dollars in cash, gold and passenger valuables.

1987 - Country singer Willie Nelson staged the FarmAid III concert at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln as a benefit for farmers.

Sept. 19

1863 - Eight companies of the 7th Iowa Cavalry arrived in Omaha to combat American Indian uprisings on the Plains.

Sept. 20

1822 - The great Sioux chief Red Cloud is believed to have been born on this date in western Nebraska.

1864 - American Indians ambushed an Army ambulance caravan near Fort Cottonwood (now Fort McPherson) in southwest Nebraska. Eleven soldiers and nine Indians were killed.

1936 - A monument to the Mormon pioneers who struggled through bitter winter weather while camped north of modern-day Omaha in the mid-19th century was dedicated at the “Winter Quarters” site.

2007 - Mike Johanns stepped down as U.S. agriculture secretary. He returned to Nebraska to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by fellow Republican Chuck Hagel.

Sept. 21

1859 - The first Nebraska territorial fair opened at Nebraska City.

1906 - A theater troupe from Rock Island, Ill., performed at the grand opening of the Pospeshil Theater in Bloomfield, Knox County.

1920 - Nebraska voters adopted 41 constitutional amendments in a special election.

Sept. 22

1953 - A bipartisan committee recommends a two-house, partisan legislature to replace Nebraska’s nonpartisan unicameral.

Sept. 23

1859 - The first Nebraska territorial fair ended at Nebraska City.

Sept. 24

1857 - Pawnee Indians signed a treaty negotiated at Table Creek, ceding most of their land in Nebraska except for a reservation along the Loup River.

Sept. 25

2007 - A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against a state judge who barred the words “rape” and “victim” in court, saying that the accuser failed to prove that he should intervene.

1875 - Sioux warrior Little Big Man disrupted a council with a treaty commission at Camp Robinson (later Fort Robinson), and the Sioux refused to sell the Black Hills.

1806 - An expedition led by Zebulon Pike reached Pawnee Indian villages on the Republican River in what is now Webster County.

Sept. 26

1972 - In Grand Island, Gov. Jim Exon sets a goal of no traffic accidents in the state for Nov. 15.

Sept. 27

1904 - The University of Colorado defeated the Nebraska football team in Boulder, ending a 27-game NU victory streak that began in 1901.

Sept. 28

1919 - A mob stormed the Douglas County Courthouse and lynched a black man accused of raping a white girl.

Sept. 29

1910 - Fire destroyed two blocks in the Ogallala business district, with damage estimated at $60,000.

Sept. 30

1972 - The body of a 10-year-old who was last seen at a carnival eight days earlier was found less than a mile from Plattsmouth near the Missouri River.