Today’s Highlights in History:
On Sept. 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz (CHAWL’-gawsh) at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. (McKinley died eight days later.)
On this date:
In 1909, American explorer Robert Peary sent a telegram from Indian Harbor, Labrador, announcing that he had reached the North Pole five months earlier.
In 1943, 79 people were killed when a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed and crashed in Philadelphia.
In 1949, Howard Unruh, a resident of Camden, New Jersey, shot and killed 13 of his neighbors.
In 1972, the Summer Olympics resumed in Munich, West Germany, a day after the deadly hostage crisis that left eleven Israelis, five Arab abductors and a West German police officer dead.
In 1975, 18-year-old tennis star Martina Navratilova of Czechoslovakia, in New York for the U.S. Open, requested political asylum in the United States.
In 1991, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
In 1997, a public funeral was held for Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in London, six days after her death in a car crash in Paris. In Calcutta, India, weeping masses gathered to pay homage to Mother Teresa, who had died the day before at age 87.
In 2001, in a dramatic shift, the Bush administration abandoned the Clinton-era effort to break up Microsoft.
In 2002, meeting outside Washington, D.C. for only the second time since 1800, Congress convened in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of September 11.
In 2006, President George W. Bush acknowledged for the first time that the CIA was running secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation had forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.
In 2007, opera star Luciano Pavarotti died in Modena, Italy, at the age of 71.
In 2013, NASA’s robotic lunar explorer, LADEE, rocketed into space.
In 2017, Hurricane Irma, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic to that point, pounded Puerto Rico with heavy rain and powerful winds; authorities said more than 900,000 people were without power.
In 2018, actor Burt Reynolds, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the 1970s in films including “Deliverance” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” died at age 82.
In 2021, actor Michael K. Williams, best known for his role on “The Wire,” was found dead in his New York apartment at age 54.