September 20 Birthday
On September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match at the Astrodome in Houston. 30,472 people attended — the largest crowd for tennis in history. 90 million watched on television. Riggs, fifty-five and a former Wimbledon champion, had challenged King, twenty-nine, after defeating Margaret Court. Riggs wore a "Sugar Daddy" jacket. King wore tennis whites. The match was a cultural event — it demonstrated that women's sports deserved equal attention and equal pay. King had founded the Women's Tennis Association earlier that year. Upton Sinclair, born this day in 1878, wrote The Jungle (1906) to expose the exploitation of immigrants in Chicago's meatpacking industry. The public focused not on the workers but on the meat — the descriptions of unsanitary conditions led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act within months. Sinclair complained: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.". People born on September 20 fall under the zodiac sign of Virgo. The birthstone is Sapphire and the birth flower is Aster. Historical events on September 20 include 1519: Ferdinand Magellan departs Spain on first circumnavigation attempt, 1973: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, 2001: Bush addresses Congress after 9/11 ("either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"). Famous people born on September 20 include Upton Sinclair (1878), Sophia Loren (1934), George R.R. Martin (1948).