Today in History: September 22, Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 22, the 265th day of 2026. There are 100 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all enslaved people in Confederate states should be freed as of Jan. 1, 1863, if the states did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union.

Also on this date:

In 1776, during the Revolutionary War, Capt. Nathan Hale, 21, was hanged as a spy by the British in New York.

In 1957, Haitian women were allowed to vote for the first time, 153 years after Haiti became an independent country; François Duvalier was elected president.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed congressional legislation making the Peace Corps a permanent federal agency within the State Department; it became an independent agency in 1981.

In 1975, Sara Jane Moore fired two shots in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford outside a San Francisco hotel, missing Ford by inches.

In 1980, the Persian Gulf conflict between Iran and Iraq erupted into a full-scale war that would continue for nearly eight years.

In 1985, rock and country music artists participated in Farm Aid, a concert staged in Champaign, Illinois, to help the nation’s farmers.

In 1993, 47 people were killed when an Amtrak passenger train derailed and plunged off a bridge into Big Bayou Canot near Mobile, Alabama.

In 2014, the United States and five Arab nations launched airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria, sending waves of planes and Tomahawk cruise missiles against an array of targets.

In 2017, as the scale of the damage from Hurricane Maria started to become clearer, Puerto Rican officials said they could not contact more than half the communities in the U.S. territory, where all power had been knocked out to the island’s 3.4 million people.

In 2018, militants disguised as soldiers opened fire on an annual military parade in southwest Iran, killing at least 25 people and wounding over 60. An Arab separatist movement claimed responsibility for the terror attack, the deadliest on Iranian soil in nearly a decade.

Today’s Birthdays: Singer-choreographer-actor Toni Basil is 83. Musician King Sunny Adé (ah-DAY’) is 80. Football Hall of Famer Harold Carmichael is 77. Rock singer David Coverdale (Deep Purple, Whitesnake) is 75. Actor Shari Belafonte is 72. Singer Debby Boone is 70. Country singer June Forester (The Forester Sisters) is 70. Singer Nick Cave is 69. Singer Andrea Bocelli (an-DRAY’-ah boh-CHEL’-ee) is 68. Singer-musician Joan Jett is 68. Actor Scott Baio is 66. Actor Bonnie Hunt is 65. Actor Mireille Enos is 52. Soccer player Thiago Silva is 42. Actor Tatiana Maslany is 41. Actor Tom Felton is 39. Actor Curry Barker is 27. Singer Jessie Murph is 21. Olympic gold medal skateboarder Coco Yoshizawa is 17.