TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Monday, September 11, the 254th day of 2017. There are 111 days left in the year.

1565 Ottoman forces retreat from Malta ending the Great Siege of Malta.

1609 Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there.

1697 Battle of Zenta: a major engagement in the Great Turkish War (1683–1699) and one of the most decisive defeats in Ottoman history.

1708 Charles XII of Sweden stops his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War.

1758 Battle of Saint Cast: France repels British invasion during the Seven Years’ War.

1786 The beginning of the Annapolis Convention.

1803 Battle of Delhi, during the Second Anglo Maratha War, between British troops under General Lake, and Marathas of Scindia’s army under General Louis Bourquin.

1826 Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason is arrested in Batavia, New York for debt after declaring that he would publish The Mysteries of Free Masonry, a book against Freemasonry.

1857 The Mountain Meadows massacre: Mormon settlers and Paiutes massacre 120 pioneers at Mountain Meadows, Utah.

1865 Alpha Tau Omega is founded at the Virginia Military Institute.

1897 After months of pursuit, generals of Menelik II of Ethiopia capture Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, bringing an end to that ancient kingdom.

1943 World War II: Start of the Nazi liquidation of the Minsk and Lida ghettos.

1965 Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Army captures the town of Burki, just southeast of Lahore.

1973 A coup in Chile headed by General Augusto Pinochet topples the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Pinochet exercises dictatorial power until ousted in a referendum in 1988.

1982 The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Phalange forces. 1997 – Nasa’s Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.

2001 Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Centre in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of Al Qaeda.