This Day in History – September 4
Today is the 247th day of 2012. There are 118 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2007: Hurricane Felix slams into Central America and Hurricane Henriette hits Baja California as a record-setting hurricane season gets even wilder with twin storms making landfall on the same day.
Other Events
422: St Boniface I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1781: Los Angeles is founded by Spanish settlers.
1929: German dirigible Graf Zeppelin completes trip around world.
1939: South Africa and Canada declare war on Germany.
1951: In America’s first live coast-to-coast television broadcast, US President Harry Truman addresses the nation from the Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco.
1957: Egypt and Syria form economic union.
1974: United States establishes diplomatic relations with East Germany, the last major western nation to do so.
1987: UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar says Iran has agreed to negotiate implementation of UN peace plan to end its war with Iraq.
1990: Prime ministers of South and North Korea meet for first time.
1993: Fighting breaks out in eastern Liberia and spills over for the first time into the Ivory Coast.
1995: The UN women’s conference opens in Beijing.
1996: New Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes the hand of Palestine Liberation Organisation chief Yasser Arafat at a meeting on the Israel-Gaza border to help clear the air of animosity.
1997: Three Buddhist nuns acknowledge in Senate testimony that their Los Angeles temple illegally reimbursed donors after a fund-raiser attended by US Vice-President Al Gore.
1998: The first genocide sentence by an international court is handed down by UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, which condemns a former Rwandan prime minister to life in prison for the slaughter of more than 500,000 Rwandans.
2009: A US jet drops 500-pound (225 kg) bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn, triggering a huge explosion that Afghan officials say kills more than 70 people.
2010: Protesters angry over his role in the Iraq war hurl shoes and eggs at former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who holds the first public signing of his memoir amid high security in Ireland’s capital.
2011: Negotiations over the surrender of one of Moammar Gadhafi’s remaining strongholds collapse, and Libyan rebels wait for the green light to launch their final attack on the besieged town of Bani Walid.
Today’s Birthdays
Francois Chateaubriand, French author (1768-1848); Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (1824-1896); Daniel Burnham, US architect/city planner (1896-1912); Antonin Artaud, French poet (1896-1948); Henry Ford II, US industrialist (1917-1987); Dawn Fraser, Australian Olympic swimming champion (1937-); Damon Wayans, US actor/comedian (1960-); Beyonce Knowles, singer/actress (1981-).
— AP