September 9 is memorable in quite a few ways. In the annals of monarchy, it’s the day in 1543 that Mary Stuart crowned “Queen of Scots.” She was only 9 months old at the time. Then a mere 472 years later, Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch of the UK. She was only 89 years old at the time.
US states don’t have monarchs, but they do share September 9 — it’s the day California became the 31st state, in 1850. It’s the selfsame date that Texas got slightly smaller. One third of the territory of Texas was transferred to the federal government in exchange for the US taking over $10 million of Texan debt. The land became part of Colorado. And Kansas. And New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming too. And Texas is still enormous.
September 9, 1940, George Stibitz of Bell Labs was attending a Math Society conference at Dartmouth when he demonstrated a teletype he’d modified. He used it to control, over normal telegraph lines, the “Complex Number Computer” he’d designed and built in New York. It was the first time anything like it had been done, and was probably the very first demonstration of anything resembling a network and a server. Stibitz, by the way, also first applied the term “digital” to computers — he thought it was better than “pulse,” which in 1942 was the term used for the computers that weren’t analog.
The world of computing has September 9 to thank not only for networking, but for bugs too. It’s the date in 1947 that an operator discovered a dead moth inside one of the electromechanical relays on the Mark II computer at Harvard. They described the problem in the log, and taped the moth there too. Grace Hopper told the story, saying it was the “first actual case of a bug being found.” The word “bug” was already being used for problems and defects in devices from engines to computers — Thomas Edison used it in the 1870s, for example — but Hopper’s story popularized it in computing.
Predating all these events by a fair margin, it was September 9 in the year 9 (9/9/9 was a pretty memorable date) that Herman the Cheruscan led an army of Germanic tribes in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. They were fighting the Romans, and there were three Roman Legions there — but Herman (the Romans called him “Arminius”) and his army won decisively. It was the greatest military defeat Rome ever suffered.
September 9 is still celebrated as “Remembrance Day for Herman the Cheruscan.” You may not have heard of the holiday though. It’s one of the Ásatrú-specific “days of remembrance” recorded in “The Troth.” That’s the handbook of the “Ásatrú Free Assembly,” the (or possibly one of the) major organizations of American Heathenry, a religious movement like modern Paganism or Wicca. They observe holidays based on ancient Norse or Germanic beliefs — and also added some of their own, including the one today. It’s not clear whether the “Remembrance Days” (there are some others too) were celebrated before the publication of “The Troth,” or whether they came into being when the book was first published in 2006.
If you live in the UK and need to make an emergency call, you dial “999.” That’s why today was chosen as “Emergency Services Day” in the UK, and it’s kicked off annually at 9am (the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month). It involves nearly everything significant about September 9 — monarchs (the reigning king or queen makes a proclamation), computer networks (the way emergency calls are handled), and… Herman the Cheruscan. Well, OK, Herman probably doesn’t come into it at all, except that his big battle happened on the 9th day of the 9th month of the ninth year. But it was still a 999.
Emergency services respond with as much speed as they can — and 999 has been known for speed ever since the first steam train pulled by Engine 999 in the US broke the 100mph record in 1893. Henry Ford called his 1902 racing car “999” after the train. And if you like super-fast motorcycles, a good choice is the legendary Ducati 999, which won the world superbike championships in 2003, 2004, and 2006.
In honor of all the significance of today’s date, you might order a takeout lunch and go pick it up as fast as you can. Oh, and you should order it from that restaurant chain…what’s the name…oh yes. The 99.
