This Day in History – Sept 6
Today is the 249th day of 2013. There are 116 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2001:The first Air France Concorde plane in more than a year is cleared for commercial flights. The carrier’s fleet had been grounded after a Concorde crashed outside Paris in July 2000, killing 113 people.
OTHER EVENTS
1565: Spanish troops arrive from Sicily, forcing Turks to abandon siege of Malta.
1620: Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to settle in the New World.
1688: Turks lose Belgrade to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, whose forces subsequently occupy Bosnia, Serbia and Wallachia.
1901: US President William McKinley is shot by an anarchist and dies eight days later.
1909: American explorer Robert Peary sends word that he has reached the North Pole five months early.
1926: Chiang Kai-shek’s forces reach Hankow in his northern campaign in Chinese civil war.
1930: President Hipolito Yrigoyen of Argentina is toppled by a military coup.
1941: Jews over the age of six in Germany are forced to wear yellow stars of David.
1944: The German V-2 missile, the precursor of modern ballistic missiles, is used for the first time, against Paris.
1965: India invades West Pakistan, the modern-day Pakistan, and bombs city of Lahore.
1966: South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death by a deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.
1968: Kingdom of Swaziland gains independence from Britain.
1970: Palestinian guerrillas seize control of three jetliners which are later blown up on the ground in Jordan after the passengers and crews are evacuated.
1975: More than 2,300 people are killed by an earthquake in eastern Turkey.
1982: Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon presses Lebanese authorities to conclude a formal peace treaty with Israel. If they do not, he warns, Israel will create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, using some of that country’s land.
1986: Two Arab terrorists kill 21 Jewish worshippers and themselves in an attack on a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey.
1991: Soviet Union recognises the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
1992: Troops in South Africa fire on African National Congress supporters near the Transkei homeland, killing 28 and wounding 200.
1993: Six oil-producing Arab nations give crucial endorsement to the peace deal that would give Palestinians self-rule.
1999: Indonesia imposes martial law in East Timor as thousands of people flee the province and pro-Indonesian militias continue a wave of terror.
2000: The largest gathering of global leaders in history assembles at the UN Millennium Summit to chart an agenda for the 21st century.
2002: Russian authorities discover a mass grave in the Russian republic of Chechnya, near the border of Ingushetia. Seven of the 15 dead were Chechen males who reportedly disappeared when Russian forces swept through their villages.
2003: Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas resigns after a prolonged power struggle with Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. Abbas blamed Israel, Arafat and the administration of US President George W Bush for undermining his government and causing his peace efforts to fail.
2005: Thousands of people demonstrate in Sao Paulo to protest against corruption, demanding harsh punishment for politicians caught up in a corruption scandal shaking the administration of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
2006: Prince Hisahito — Japan’s imperial family’s first male heir since the 1960s — is born in Tokyo.
2009: Passengers leap into the dark sea and parents drop children into life rafts from a stricken ferry carrying nearly 1,000 people after it capsized in the middle of the night in the southern Philippines, killing nine and leaving 30 missing.
2010: Huge posters plastered across the North Korean capital hail the nation’s biggest political convention in 30 years as a historic event as the world watches for signs that the country’s next leader is making his public debut.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Guillaume Dubois, French cardinal-statesman (1652-1723); John Dalton, British chemist (1766-1844); Marie Joseph du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, French politician and soldier (1757-1834); Joseph P Kennedy, US businessman and ambassador to England (1888-1969); Louis Federico Leloir, Argentinian Noble-winning biochemist (1906-1987); Rosie Perez, US actress (1964-); Roger Waters, English rock musician (1943-).
— AP