The TIME Magazine Vault

Un jeune Allemand ? l'?cole en Angleterre

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National Punctuation Day is Sept. 24

Humble punctuation marks get their due on Sept. 24. In 1988, TIME's Pico Iyer explained why they deserve to be celebrated. "Punctuation marks are the road signs placed along the highway of our communication—to control speeds, provide directions and prevent head-on collisions," he wrote. "A period has the unblinking finality of a red light; the comma is a flashing yellow light that asks us only to slow down; and the semicolon is a stop sign that tells us to ease gradually to a halt, before gradually starting up again. By establishing the relations between words, punctuation establishes the relations between the people using words."

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Sept. 23, 1957

Violent Start for School Integration

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‘Autumn’s Chemistry’

As fall begins, we turn once again to TIME's 1941 explanation of the science behind the leaves' changing colors:
"From hedgerow, lawn and wooded hill
Departs the summer's chlorophyll;
The elms and hickories lose their green
And glow instead with carotene,
While sumacs, maples redden in
A burst of anthocyanin—
And TIME is moved to tell its clients
The reason why in terms of science"

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Sept. 21, 1962

Revisiting the Monroe Doctrine

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End Of Military's Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy Celebrated In San Francisco

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The End of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

Five years ago, on Sept. 20, 2011, the policy known as 'Don't ask, don't tell'—which kept gay people in the U.S. military in a life of hiding—was officially ended. "Living under 'Don't ask' was like being in a world that was upside down," one man who was directly affected by the policy wrote for TIME in the weeks that followed. "From the start, it made life precarious. There was the constant threat of losing your job and career, but that was only part of the struggle."

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