TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Friday, September 15, the 258th day of 2017. There are 107 days left in the year.

1830 Porfirio Díaz, Mexican general and politician, 29th President of Mexico was born.

1851 Saint Joseph’s University is founded in Philadelphia.

1862 American Civil War: Confederate forces capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia (present-day Harpers Ferry, West Virginia)

1873 Franco-Prussian War: The last German troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity.

1894 First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeats Qing dynasty China in the Battle of Pyongyang.

1915 The Empire Picture Theatre (now The New Empire Cinema), the oldest running cinema in mainland Australia, opens in Bowral, New South Wales.

1916 Margaret Lockwood, Pakistani-English actress was born.

1918 World War I: Allied troops break through the Bulgarian defenses on the Macedonian Front.

1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.

1947 Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077.

1958 A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 48.·

1959 Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.

1962 The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Four children killed in the bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States.

1967 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1971 Josh Charles, American actor and director was born.

1974 Air Vietnam Flight 706 is hijacked, then crashes while attempting to land with 75 on board.

1983 Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigns.

2000 The opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics was held in Sydney, Australia.

2001 President George W. Bush gives his first post September 11th weekly address.

2004 National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players’ union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.

2008 Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in the United States history.