ON THIS DAY
Today is Wednesday, September 2, the 245th day of 2015. Highlights on this date: 1666 - Great Fire of London burns for five days, nearly destroying the city, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, but claims few lives. 1796 - The September Massacres, which killed some 1,200 people, begin when an armed band attacks prisoners being transferred between jails in Paris in the belief that they are counter revolutionaries. 1870 - Emperor Napoleon III and 83,000 French troops surrender at Sedan to encircling German troops, deciding the Franco-German War after six weeks. 1898 - British forces under Horatio Kitchener defeat the Khalifa’s army at Omdurman, Sudan. The young Winston Churchill takes part in a cavalry charge. 1963 - Alabama Governor George C. Wallace prevents the racial integration of Tuskegee High School by encircling the building with state troopers. 1985 - A US-French expedition locates the Titanic wreckage, about 900 km off Newfoundland, Canada, where the ship sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage, killing some 1,500 people. 2010 - Professor Stephen Hawking argues in his new book that there need not be a God behind the creation of the universe.