September 26th, 1960Millions of Americans tune in to watch presidential candidates debateon television for the first time. Squaring off in Chicago, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, the democratic candidate, “I think we are going to have to do a better job if we are going to meet the responsibilities which time in advance have placed upon us.”

And the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon, “Because we are in a deadly competition, a competition not only with the men in the Kremlin, but the men in Peking.” Viewers give Kennedy tan, fit, rested, the edge over an exhausted Nixon, whose poor makeup job fails to ease his five o'clock shadow. Kennedy narrowly wins in November, a sign of TV's growing influence on politics. 1980Cuba's government abruptly closes Mariel harbor, ending a massive wave of refugees to the United States five months after it began. Known as the “freedom flotilla”, the refugees traveled in small boats from Fidel Castro's Cuba to Florida, overwhelming US authorities. 1898Composer George Gershwin, whose iconic tunes include “Rhapsody in Blue” and “I've Got Rhythm”, is born in Brooklyn, New York. 1888T.S. Eliot, regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century with his work The Waste Land, is born in Saint Louis. Eliot won renewed fame when composer Andrew Lloyd Webber used the poet's words as the basis for his hit musical, Cats.

1981Serena Williams, a star player in women's tennis, just like her older sister Venus, is born in Saginaw, Michigan. And 1957In New York, the musical West Side Story, a Romeo-and-Juliet tale with a Big Apple background, opens on Broadway. Today in History, September 26th, Tim Maguire, the Associated Press.