Today in History: September 6

3761 BC: The Hebrew calendar begins.

1522: The Victoria, the only survivor of Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships, reaches Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the globe.  The 26 tons of spice in the hold are enough to yield a small profit on the voyage, even accounting for the lost ships.

1683: Jean-Baptiste Colbert, whose detailed regulations for every branch of French commerce, restrictions on workers, and protection of large businesses earned the name “mercantilism,” dies at age 74.

1814: Quebec lawyer George-Étienne Cartier, the “Father of Confederation,” is born at Saint-Antoine in what is then called Lower Canada.

1847: Henry David Thoreau leaves the wilderness of Walden Pond for the home of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, a 15-minute walk away.

1901: U.S. President William McKinley (Albany Law 1867) is shot and fatally wounded at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York.  His assassin uses a .32 caliber Iver-Johnson Safety Hammer revolver.

1991: Sic transit gloria mundi – Leningrad’s name is switched back to St. Petersburg after 67 years.

2001: The U.S. Justice Department announces it has decided not to seek a break-up of Microsoft Corp., and will instead pursue other antitrust remedies.