On September 21, 1866, the US Army organized six new Black regiments: the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry. Created during Reconstruction, they gave African American soldiers a continuing place in the peacetime Regular Army and began the history of the troops later known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
On September 17, 1730, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was born in Magdeburg, Prussia, long before he became the drillmaster who brought order and consistency to the Continental Army at Valley Forge. His training methods did not win the American Revolution by themselves, but they gave inexperienced troops a clearer system for fighting, marching, camping, and working as an army.
On September 16, 1893, some 100,000 people raced to claim 6 million acres of land in former Indian Territory in Oklahoma. It was the largest land run into Oklahoma and resulted in the establishment of 40,000 homesteads.
On September 15, 1916, strange armored machines lumbered across the shell-torn ground near Flers, France, as British forces introduced tanks to combat for the first time. Their debut at the Battle of the Somme did not break the stalemate, but it revealed the potential of a weapon that would reshape warfare.
Businessman and philanthropist Milton Snavely Hershey was born on September 13, 1857, in Derry Township, Pennsylvania. After several failed attempts at business, he built a profitable caramel company, then used its sale to pursue a larger goal: making milk chocolate affordable for ordinary Americans.
On September 7, 1813, a newspaper referred to the United States as “Uncle Sam.” The name reportedly came from Troy, New York’s Uncle Sam Wilson, and has since become one of America’s most enduring national symbols.
The First Battle of the Marne began on September 6, 1914. An important Allied victory, it was one of the most decisive battles in history and inaugurated the start of trench warfare that would last for much of the war.
Marguerite Higgins Hall was born on September 3, 1920, in Hong Kong, China. A war correspondent for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, she was the first woman awarded a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
David “Davy” Crockett was born on August 17, 1786 in Greene County, North Carolina (though it is now part of Tennessee). Dubbed the King of the Wild Frontier, Crockett was a folk hero, politician, frontiersman, and soldier.