September 1, 2026 — Rewind to 2007

Good morning. It’s September 1st — let’s begin where we always do: on this very date in history.

1897 — The first section of Boston’s Tremont Street Subway entered service, giving the United States its first underground public-transit system.

1914 — Martha, believed to be the last surviving passenger pigeon, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. A bird once counted in the billions had vanished from the Earth.

1923 — The Great Kantō earthquake devastated Tokyo, Yokohama, and surrounding areas, becoming one of Japan’s most destructive natural disasters.

1939 — Nazi Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II in Europe. Britain and France would declare war on Germany two days later.

1951 — Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed the ANZUS security treaty in San Francisco, establishing a Pacific security relationship that would endure for decades.

1972 — Boris Spassky resigned the adjourned 21st game of his world-championship match against Bobby Fischer, making Fischer the first American-born player to capture the official world chess title.

1983 — A Soviet fighter shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after the passenger jet strayed into Soviet airspace near Sakhalin Island. All 269 people aboard were killed.

Now, let’s set the dial back to 2007…

A first-class letter cost 41 cents, and the new Forever Stamp meant you could stop worrying about buying penny stamps after the next postal increase.

At the gas station, regular was hovering around $2.75 to $2.80 a gallon nationally as August gave way to September.

And Netflix still meant red envelopes arriving in the mail — but the future was beginning to peek through. Earlier that year, the company had started rolling out a feature that let subscribers watch a limited selection of movies and television shows instantly on their PCs.

DVD-by-mail was still the main event.

Streaming had entered the room.

Just one day earlier, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told economists in Jackson Hole that financial turbulence originating in the subprime mortgage market was spreading into the broader mortgage and financial system.

Adjustable-rate subprime loans were already showing serious stress. Lending standards were tightening. Some mortgage lenders had pulled back or shut down.

That same day, President George W. Bush announced federal measures intended to help some homeowners refinance and avoid foreclosure.

To someone waking up on September 1, 2007, this was not yet “the 2008 financial crisis.”

But the warning lights were plainly on.

If you headed to the theater that Saturday, the movie at the top of the domestic box office was Rob Zombie’s Halloween.

The remake had opened the day before and earned about $8.6 million on September 1 alone. Across the Friday-through-Sunday weekend, it would take in roughly $26.4 million, enough for the No. 1 spot.

Behind it were Superbad, Balls of Fury, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Rush Hour 3.

That is a very 2007 multiplex.

The No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 dated September 1, 2007 was:

It sat at the top ahead of Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and Timbaland’s “The Way I Are.”

For a few minutes, anyway, your 2007 soundtrack is back.

College football opened its season with an extraordinary upset.

On September 1, Appalachian State walked into Michigan Stadium and beat the No. 5 Wolverines, 34–32, in front of 109,218 people.

Michigan had moved ahead late in the fourth quarter, but Appalachian State drove back down the field and Julian Rauch kicked a 24-yard field goal with 26 seconds remaining.

Michigan still had one last chance.

Its final field-goal attempt was blocked.

The Mountaineers had done it.

A team from what was then college football’s lower Division I subdivision had gone into the Big House and beaten one of the country’s highest-ranked programs.

September had barely begun, and college football already had an upset people would remember.

Saturday night television on September 1, 2007 was pure Labor Day weekend.

ABC had college football: Tennessee at California.

CBS offered reruns of NCIS and Cold Case, followed by 48 Hours Mystery.

NBC filled the evening with three consecutive reruns of Friday Night Lights.

And FOX served up two episodes of Cops, followed by America’s Most Wanted.

Before streaming queues became the default, this was still the world of network schedules, reruns, appointment viewing — and whatever happened to be on when you picked up the remote.

A little more than two weeks earlier, Disney Channel had aired High School Musical 2.

The August 17 premiere drew about 17.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched basic-cable telecast at the time.

Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Ryan, Chad, and the rest of the East High crowd had traded the school hallways for summer jobs at Lava Springs Country Club — and Disney had something much larger than a successful made-for-TV sequel.

It had a youth-culture phenomenon.

In 2007, if there were kids or tweens in your house, there was a very good chance you knew exactly what time it was.

— a couple of quick things before you go —

One of the simplest healthy-sleep habits is consistency.

The CDC recommends that adults generally get at least seven hours of sleep and suggests going to bed and getting up at about the same time each day.

Not glamorous. Still useful.

Health Snap provides general wellness information, not individualized medical advice.

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Explore today’s free health report at ourfreehealthreport.com.

Forward this to them — there’s something uniquely fun about discovering what else happened on the day you arrived.

🎂 In good company: Rocky Marciano · Lily Tomlin · Barry Gibb · Gloria Estefan · Zendaya

Every day has a story.

Discover yours.

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