September 19 in History

Two German hikers descending from the Fineilspitze peak in the Otztal Alps on September 19, 1991, noticed what appeared to be a human body melting out of the ice at an elevation of 10,530 feet on the Austrian-Italian border. Helmut and Erika Simon assumed they had found a recently deceased mountaineer. The corpse turned out to be more than 5,300 years old, the best-preserved prehistoric human ever discovered and a window into Copper Age Europe so detailed that scientists could reconstruct his last meals, his health problems, and the violent manner of his death. Otzi, as he was named after the mountain range where he was found, had been naturally mummified by the alpine ice and snow that covered him shortly after his death around 3300 BC. His skin, organs, bones, and even the contents of his stomach survived intact. He was approximately forty-five years old, five feet three inches tall, and suffered from arthritis, whipworm parasites, and Lyme disease. His body bore over sixty tattoos, clusters of lines and crosses concentrated near his joints and spine, which researchers believe may have been therapeutic, possibly an early form of acupuncture. The artifacts found with him were equally extraordinary. He carried a copper axe, a flint knife, a bow and arrows, a birch-bark container holding embers wrapped in maple leaves for starting fires, and clothing made from the skins of at least five different animal species. His equipment revealed a level of technological sophistication that challenged assumptions about Copper Age life, and the copper axe suggested he held high social status. The most dramatic discovery came in 2001, when an X-ray revealed an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder. Otzi had been shot from behind, and the arrow severed a subclavian artery, causing him to bleed to death. DNA analysis of blood found on his weapons and clothing matched at least four other individuals, suggesting he had been in close combat with multiple attackers before his death. The Iceman was not a lost shepherd caught in a storm but the victim of a murder over five millennia ago, now housed in a custom-built museum in Bolzano, Italy, kept in a climate-controlled chamber at minus 6 degrees Celsius.

The Washington Post published a 35,000-word manifesto titled "Industrial Society and Its Future" on September 19, 1995, written by an anonymous terrorist who had killed three people and injured twenty-three others with mail bombs over a seventeen-year campaign. The FBI and the newspaper’s editors agreed to print the document on the theory, advocated by the bomber himself, that publication might lead someone to recognize the writing and identify him. The gamble worked: within weeks, David Kaczynski read the manifesto and recognized the ideas and prose style of his brother Ted. Theodore Kaczynski had been a mathematics prodigy who entered Harvard at sixteen and earned a PhD from the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley as the youngest assistant professor in the mathematics department’s history. He resigned in 1969 and eventually retreated to a remote cabin in Montana, where he lived without electricity or running water. His first bomb, a crude device mailed in 1978, injured a Northwestern University campus security officer. The attacks escalated in sophistication and lethality over the following years, targeting university professors and airline executives. The FBI spent over 17 years and 50 million dollars on the investigation, making the Unabomber case the most expensive manhunt in American history at the time. The task force analyzed fragments of devices, linguistic patterns, and wood signatures without identifying the bomber. Kaczynski’s manifesto, a dense polemic arguing that industrial technology was destroying human freedom and dignity, represented both his ideology and his vanity. He demanded publication in the New York Times or Washington Post as the price for ending the bombings. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh recommended publication despite concerns about setting a precedent for terrorism-by-deadline. The Post printed the manifesto as a special supplement. David Kaczynski, who had been growing suspicious of his brother for years, contacted the FBI through a lawyer after recognizing Ted’s distinctive arguments about the evils of technology. Ted Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin in April 1996 and pleaded guilty to all charges to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to life without parole and died in federal prison in June 2023.

The ancient city of Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, fell to the armies of the Rashidun Caliphate on September 19, 634, after a six-month siege that broke the Byzantine Empire’s grip on Syria and opened the Levant to Arab conquest. The fall of Damascus was the first major urban capture in the great wave of Islamic expansion that reshaped the map of the Near East and North Africa within a single generation. The Arab forces were commanded by Khalid ibn al-Walid, a former opponent of the Prophet Muhammad who converted to Islam and became the most brilliant tactician of the early conquests. Known as the Sword of God, Khalid had already defeated a Byzantine force at the Battle of Ajnadayn in July 634 before marching his army north to Damascus. The city was defended by a garrison under Thomas, the son-in-law of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, who sealed the gates and awaited relief from the main imperial army. Khalid divided his forces to blockade all six gates of the city simultaneously, a bold disposition that stretched his army thin but prevented the garrison from concentrating its defenses. The siege dragged through the summer as the defenders hoped for the Byzantine relief force that Heraclius was assembling in the north. Food grew scarce inside the walls, and morale deteriorated as it became clear that rescue was not coming quickly enough. The city fell through a combination of assault and negotiation. Khalid stormed the eastern Bab Sharqi gate at the same time that Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, the overall commander of the Muslim forces in Syria, accepted a peaceful surrender at the western Bab al-Jabiya gate. The result was a dual arrangement: one half of the city was taken by force and one half by treaty, a distinction that affected the terms applied to the Christian and Jewish inhabitants. Damascus became the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 and remained one of the most important cities in the Islamic world for centuries. The Great Mosque of Damascus, built by the Umayyads on the site of a Roman temple and Christian cathedral, still stands as a monument to the civilization that emerged from the conquests Khalid’s sword made possible.

Governor Lord Glasgow signed the Electoral Act into law on September 19, 1893, making New Zealand the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in national elections. The achievement came after years of campaigning led by Kate Sheppard and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, whose petition drives had gathered signatures from nearly a quarter of the entire adult female population of the colony. Ten weeks later, women turned out in extraordinary numbers for the general election, with 85 percent of registered women casting ballots. The suffrage movement in New Zealand drew strength from several converging currents. The temperance movement, which saw alcohol as a destroyer of families and household income, attracted women who connected the right to vote with the power to regulate the liquor trade. Liberal politicians saw women’s suffrage as a way to expand their electoral base. And New Zealand’s relatively young colonial society, less burdened by entrenched aristocratic traditions than Britain, proved more receptive to democratic experimentation. Sheppard organized three major petition campaigns between 1891 and 1893. The final petition, presented to Parliament on a roll of paper that stretched across the floor of the legislative chamber, carried 31,872 signatures, roughly one-fifth of all adult women in the colony. The bill passed the House of Representatives by a comfortable margin, but the Legislative Council, the appointed upper chamber, was narrowly divided. Two councilors who had previously voted against suffrage switched their votes, reportedly because they were offended by heavy-handed lobbying from the liquor industry, which opposed women’s suffrage precisely because it expected women to vote for prohibition. New Zealand’s example reverberated across the globe. Australia followed in 1902, Finland in 1906, and Norway in 1913. Britain and the United States did not enfranchise women nationally until 1918 and 1920, respectively. Sheppard became an international figure, corresponding with suffrage leaders worldwide and using New Zealand’s experience as proof that women’s political participation strengthened rather than destabilized democratic governance. New Zealand women could vote in 1893, but they could not stand for Parliament until 1919, and the first woman was not elected until 1933.