A look back at events in history on September 17 with Mike Badham

1787: The US constitution stated that every citizen could become president, so today is America's Citizenship Day.

1859: Josh Norton, a penniless veteran of the 1849 gold rush, put an ad in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin proclaiming himself emperor of America. He strode the Frisco streets dressed in a posh uniform, complete with sword, and ordered Congress to dissolve. Congress ignored him, but the tickled citizens went along with the joke. Norton, an Englishman, ate free in restaurants, gate-crashed civic functions and was funded by well-wishers for 30 years.

1855: An astonished ship's captain spotted the derelict Resolute drifting empty between Canada and Greenland. She was one of five ships abandoned 1,000 miles away by a British expedition off Melville Island, northern Canada, a year before. Towed to America, she was refitted at public expense by Congress and sailed home as a gift for Queen Victoria. 1908: Lieutenant Selfridge of the US Army became the first-ever passenger to die in an air crash. He was on a demo flight with Orville Wright, who was injured.

1911: The first transcontinental aeroplane left New York for California.

1931: Long-playing 33A rpm records were demonstrated in New York by the RCA Victor Company - but failed because the players were too dear. The idea had no success until the vinyl LPs of 1948.

1939: Poland was invaded by the USSR. The country was partitioned between Russia and Germany ten days later.

1941: The British Government controlled the price of potatoes at a penny a pound, so that people would eat more of them.

1944: British paras dropped at Arnhem, Holland, in a bid to shorten the war. After the resulting defeat, only a quarter of the original 10,000 men returned. The battle is analysed in Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.