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September 2		"A Malicious Bloody Flame"
		On this day in 1666, the Great Fire of London began, enkindled by the King's baker when he failed to damp his oven properly. The Diary of Samuel Pepys provides a fascinating eye-witness account, from his first horrified sighting of "an infinite great fire," to digging a pit for his best wine and cheese, to a final walkabout "with our feet ready to burn."
September 1		Auden, Anne Frank, War
		On this day in 1939 Germany invaded Poland, starting WWII. This gave moment to W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939," one of his most famous poems, and one of many attempts to figure how "the windiest militant trash" could have us all "Lost in a haunted wood." On this day two years later, the yellow star was made obligatory for Jews in Germany; and this day three years after would be Anne Frank's last before learning her fate: the last train bound out of Holland for Auschwitz.
August 31		Hersey's "Hiroshima" and Hibakusha
		On this day in 1946 John Hersey's "Hiroshima" was published in The New Yorker. The article took up almost all sixty-eight pages of text space, an unprecedented and unannounced step for the magazine, taken so "that everyone might well take time to consider." When Hersey died in 1993, one obituary called "Hiroshima" the "most famous magazine article ever published."