TODAY IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER 1

September 1 1894: Minnesota town burns
The town of Hinckley, Minnesota, was destroyed by a forest fire on this day in 1894. A total of 440 people died in the area.
The upper Midwest was particularly vulnerable to devastating fires at the end of the 19th century as European settlers cleared the land for agriculture and timber and new railroad lines were built through heavily wooded areas. Hinckley was a new lumber and rail town built along the Grindstone River in Minnesota near the Wisconsin border. The town’s settlers felled trees for lumber using slash cutting techniques that left behind large amounts of wood debris—excellent fire fuel. Further, they set up lumber yards very close to the rail lines. This proved a dangerous combination when sparks from trains set the wood debris ablaze.

In the summer of 1894, drought conditions in the Upper Midwest made a deadly fire even more likely. On the afternoon of September 1, fires near two rail lines south of Hinckley broke out and spread north. As the raging fire reached the town’s train depot, 350 of the townspeople got on a train to escape. The train had to pass right through flames, but reached safety in West Superior, Wisconsin.

Other Hinckley residents sought refuge in the swamps near town, but many in this group were killed, some from drowning. About 100 other residents fled to a gravel pit fill with water; most managed to survive. A train that was entering Hinckley from the north reversed direction to avoid the blaze, but still caught fire. The only survivors were those who managed to jump from the train into a lake.

In all, 300,000 acres of town and forest burned in the fire, causing about $25 million in damages. In Hinckley, 228 people died. More than 200 others in the surrounding areas also perished, including 23 Ojibwa natives.

September 1 1969

Muhammad Idris I as-Sanusi, the king of Libya was ousted. Colonel Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi, the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council became the new leader.

September 1 1985

The South African government suspended payments on all foreign debts.

September 1 1983: Korean Airlines flight shot down by Soviet Union

Soviet jet fighters intercept a Korean Airlines passenger flight in Russian airspace and shoot the plane down, killing 269 passengers and crewmembers. The incident dramatically increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.

On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines (KAL) flight 007 was on the last leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul, with a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. As it approached its final destination, the plane began to veer far off its normal course. In just a short time, the plane flew into Russian airspace and crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula, where some top-secret Soviet military installations were known to be located. The Soviets sent two fighters to intercept the plane. According to tapes of the conversations between the fighter pilots and Soviet ground control, the fighters quickly located the KAL flight and tried to make contact with the passenger jet. Failing to receive a response, one of the fighters fired a heat-seeking missile. KAL 007 was hit and plummeted into the Sea of Japan. All 269 people on board were killed.

This was not the first time a South Korean flight had run into trouble over Russia. In 1978, the Soviets forced a passenger jet down over Murmansk; two passengers were killed during the emergency landing. In its first public statement concerning the September 1983 incident, the Soviet government merely noted that an unidentified aircraft had been shot down flying over Russian territory. The United States government reacted with horror to the disaster. The Department of State suggested that the Soviets knew the plane was an unarmed civilian passenger aircraft. President Ronald Reagan called the incident a “massacre” and issued a statement in which he declared that the Soviets had turned “against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere.” Five days after the incident, the Soviets admitted that the plane had indeed been a passenger jet, but that Russian pilots had no way of knowing this. A high ranking Soviet military official stated that the KAL flight had been involved in espionage activities. The Reagan administration responded by suspending all Soviet passenger air service to the United States, and dropped several agreements being negotiated with the Soviets.

Despite the heated public rhetoric, many Soviets and American officials and analysts privately agreed that the incident was simply a tragic misunderstanding. The KAL flight had veered into a course that was close to one being simultaneously flown by a U.S. spy plane; perhaps Soviet radar operators mistook the two. In the Soviet Union, several of the military officials responsible for air defense in the Far East were fired or demoted. It has never been determined how the KAL flight ended up nearly 200 miles off course.

Source: history.com, africanhistory.about.com