September 10 Birthday
On September 10, 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a British naval squadron at the Battle of Lake Erie. His flagship, the Lawrence, was so damaged that he transferred his flag by rowboat under fire to the Niagara. He then sailed the Niagara through the British line and won. His message to General William Henry Harrison — "We have met the enemy and they are ours" — became one of the most famous dispatches in American naval history. The victory secured the Great Lakes for the United States and enabled the recapture of Detroit. The Large Hadron Collider was first tested on September 10, 2008. It is the world's largest machine — a 17-mile circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border, colliding protons at nearly the speed of light. Some feared it would create a black hole that would destroy the Earth. It did not. In 2012, it discovered the Higgs boson, the particle that gives mass to other particles. The LHC has cost $9 billion and employs 10,000 scientists. People born on September 10 fall under the zodiac sign of Virgo. The birthstone is Sapphire and the birth flower is Aster. Historical events on September 10 include 1813: Battle of Lake Erie — Perry's victory ("We have met the enemy..."), 1963: Twenty Black students integrate Alabama public schools, 2008: Large Hadron Collider first test in Switzerland. Famous people born on September 10 include Arnold Palmer (1929), Karl Lagerfeld (1933), José Feliciano (1945).