The Battle of Alam Halfa was fought from August 30 to September 5, 1942, during World War IIs Western Desert Campaign.

With the conclusion of the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942, both British and Axis forces in North Africa paused to rest and refit.

On the British side, Prime Minister Winston Churchill travelled to Cairo and relieved Commander-in-Chief Middle East Command General Claude Auchinleck and replacing him with General Sir Harold Alexander. Command of the British Eight Army at El Alamein ultimately was given to Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. Assessing the situation at El Alamein, Montgomery found that the front was constricted to a narrow line running from the coast to the impassable Qattara Depression.

To defend this line, three infantry divisions from XXX Corps were positioned on ridges running from the coast south to Ruweisat Ridge. To the south of the ridge, the 2nd New Zealand Division was similarly fortified along a line ending at Alam Nayil. In each case, the infantry was protected by extensive minefields and artillery support. The final twelve miles from Alam Nayil to the depression was featureless and difficult to defend.

For this area, Montgomery ordered that minefields and wire be laid, with the 7th Motor Brigade Group and 4th Light Armoured Brigade of the 7th Armoured Division in position behind.

When attacked, these two brigades were to inflict maximum casualties before falling back. Montgomery established his main defensive line along the ridges running east from Alam Nayil, most notably Alam Halfa Ridge.

It was here that he positioned the bulk of his medium and heavy armor along with anti-tank guns and artillery. It was Montgomerys intention to entice Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to attack through this southern corridor and then defeat him in a defensive battle. As British forces assumed their positions, they were augmented by the arrival of reinforcements and new equipment as convoys reached Egypt.

Across the sands, Rommels situation was growing desperate as his

Leopold Sedar Senghor, poet, politician, is elected President of Senegal.

Alcee Lamar Hastings, the son of Julius C. and Mildred L. Hastings, was born on September 5, 1936 in Altamonte Springs, Florida.  His parents were domestic servants who eventually left Florida to take jobs to pay for his education.  Hastings remained in the state, living with his maternal grandmother while he attended and eventually  graduated from Crooms Academy in Sanford, Florida in 1953.  He then attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he received his B.A. in 1958 and then Howard University School of Law.  He received a J.D. degree, however from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee in 1964.

After graduation, Hastings went into private practice as a civil rights attorney for thirteen years .  In 1977 he was appointed a judge of the circuit court of Broward County, Florida, a position he held until 1979.  In 1979 President Jimmy Carter appointed Hastings as the United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida.  

In 1989 Federal Judge Alcee Hastings was impeached and removed from office for perjury and corruption.  Judge Hastings was charged with taking a bribe of $150,000 from Frank and Thomas Romano.  The bribe was in exchange for a lenient sentence and a return of seized assets for twenty-one counts of racketeering.  Hastings was later acquitted by a jury after his alleged co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify in court.  Although the jury found Hastings not guilty, Congress took up the case and in 1988, Hastings was impeached by a 413-3 vote in the House of Representatives and then convicted in the Senate and was removed from his position.  Hastings is only the sixth federal judge in United States history to be impeached and removed from office.

Even though he had a tainted record as a judge, Alcee Hastings was elected in 1992 to represent the newly created 23rd District of Florida in the United States House of Representatives, a seat he holds to this day.  Hastings, Representative Carrie Meek and Representative Corrine Brown, all

Secretary of the American Negro Academy, John W Cromwell was born, 1846

Frank Yerby, novelist, O. Henry short story award winner, born

Ross, J.

Bailing Press

Sept 05, 1899

Patent No. 632,539

Absalom Jones ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church.

George Washington Murray was elected to Congress by South Carolina, 1895

Our Nig by Harriet Wilson, the first novel published in the U.S. by an African American woman, is published. It was lost for years until reprinted with a critical essay by African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1983.