September 10 · This Day in America
On the open water of Lake Erie, a 27-year-old commodore named Oliver Hazard Perry takes a battered American squadron into a British line of six warships. His flagship, the Lawrence, is shot to a wreck beneath him — most of her crew dead or wounded. So Perry climbs into an open boat under fire, rows to the undamaged Niagara, and sails straight back into the smoke. Within fifteen minutes the British strike their colors. It is the first time in history an entire British naval squadron surrenders. Perry scribbles his report to General William Henry Harrison on the back of an old envelope: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Control of the lake passes to the United States. Detroit is recovered, the Northwest secured. A young navy, barely older than the country it served, had just refused to give up the ship.
Source: www.eriemaritimemuseum.org
Also on this day · 1846
A broke machinist from Massachusetts carries a wooden model to the Patent Office in Washington. On this day Patent No. 4,750 is granted to Elias Howe Jr. for a sewing machine that locks two threads together with a curved, eye-pointed needle and a shuttle. It would take lawsuits, poverty, and Isaac Singer before the world caught up — but the stitch that clothed an industrializing nation was now, officially, an American idea.
Source: guides.loc.gov
“We have met the enemy and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.”Oliver Hazard Perry, dispatch to Gen. William Henry Harrison, 1813