18 September

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 18 September: 

1. On this date in 1891, Harriet Maxwell Converse became the first white woman to be named chief of an Indian tribe. She became chief of the Six Nations Tribe at Tonawanda Reservation in New York. She'd been adopted by the Seneca tribe 7 years earlier because of her efforts on behalf of the tribe.
2. In 1846, the last exchange of letters occurred between poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning before they eloped.
3. In 1965, an albatross with a record wing span of 11ft 11in was caught in the Tasman Sea.
4. The famous Blackpool Illuminations were switched on for the first time on this date in 1879.
5. In 1830, a race was held between a Horse and a train. The Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in The US, was pitted against a horse in a 9 mile race between Riley's Tavern and Baltimore. Tom Thumb suffered mechanical difficulties including a leaky boiler (and possibly leaves on the line and the wrong kind of snow?) and lost by a considerable margin.
6. In 1995, a motorist in Carlisle was fined £140 for throwing a Doughnut at a traffic warden.
7. In 1981, France abolished execution by guillotine. Yes, that recently.
8. In 1793 President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the north wing of the US Capitol building, using a silver trowel and marble-headed gavel, in accordance with Masonic ritual.
9. In 1983, British adventurer George Meegan finished a 19,021 mile walk from the tip of South America to the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. It had taken him six years.
10. In 2005, the world’s longest tattoo session ended at the Outta Limits Tattoo and Body Piercing Studio in Dubbo, New South Wales. Glen Keizer let Paul Blackhall tattoo him for 42 hours and 10 minutes, in order to take the title away from Damien Ouchynik who'd endured 39 hours and 21 minutes a year earlier.

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