September 26 · This Day in America
On the evening of September 26, 1960, a Chicago studio fills with white light, and for the first time in American history two men running for president stand together in front of a camera. Some seventy million people are watching. John F. Kennedy, tanned and rested, looks straight into the lens. Richard Nixon, recently hospitalized and refusing makeup, looks pale and tired under the same harsh light. The strange part comes after: people who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won; people who saw it on television were sure of Kennedy. The medium had changed the message. American politics would never again be only about words — now it was about the face delivering them, beamed into every living room at once. The republic had a new public square, and it was made of glass.
Source: www.jfklibrary.org
Also on this day · 1918
Before dawn on September 26, 1918, more than a million American soldiers move forward through the fog of the Argonne Forest in France, the opening of the largest battle in U.S. history. Over forty-seven days it would cost roughly 26,000 American lives and help end the First World War that autumn. Most of those young men now rest beneath white crosses at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery — the largest American military cemetery in Europe.
Source: www.abmc.gov
“In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or half-free. In the election of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free.”John F. Kennedy, 1960