ON SEPT. 5
In 1698, Russia’s Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards.
In 1774 the first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia.
In 1836 Sam Houston was elected president of the Republic of Texas.
In 1882 the nation’s first Labor Day parade was held in New York.
In 1939 the United States proclaimed its neutrality in World War II.
In 1945 Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime broadcaster Tokyo Rose, was arrested in Yokohama. (D’Aquino served six years in prison; she was pardoned in 1977 by President Gerald Ford.)
In 1957 the novel “On the
Road,” by Beat writer Jack Kerouac was first published.
In 1972 Arab guerrillas attacked the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympic games; 11 Israelis, five guerrillas and a police officer were killed in the siege.
In 1977 the U.S. launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft two weeks after launching its twin, Voyager 2.
In 1990 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein urged Arabs to rise up in a holy war against the West and former allies who had turned against him.
In 1992 a strike that had idlednearly43,000General Motors Corp. workers ended as members of a United Auto Workers local in Lordstown, Ohio, approved a new agreement.
In 1997 Mother Teresa died in Kolkata; she was 87.
In 1999 hundreds of Islamic insurgents launched a new offensive in southern Russia, hours after a bomb smashed a building housing Russian military families; the blast was the first of four apartment building explosions blamed by Russian officials on Chechen rebels that killed a total of about 300 people.
In 2000, on the eve of congressional hearings into the recall of 6.5 million Firestone tires, Ford Motor Co. released new documents to bolster its contention that it had no reason to doubt the safety of the tires being investigated in 88 deaths.
In 2001 Mexican President Vicente Fox arrived at the White House as the first state visitor of George W. Bush’s presidency.
In 2002 Afghan President Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt in Kandahar, hours after an explosives-packed car tore through a Kabul market.
In 2003 Israeli commandos killed a Hamas bombmaker in a firefight and pulverized the West Bank apartment building in which he had been hiding.
In 2005 President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts for chief justice. Also in 2005 an Indonesian jetliner crashed, killing 143 people, including 44 on the ground; 18 passengers survived.
In 2014 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced a cease-fire in the 5-monthold conflict against pro-Russia separatists.
In 2015 visitors to Garfield Park on Chicago’s West Side reported a child’s foot floating in the lagoon there; over the next several weeks police recovered the feet, hands and head of what was determined to be a 2- or 3-year-old African-American boy. (The remains were later identified as 2-year-old Kyrian Knox. Kamel Harris, who was babysitting the toddler, was charged with first-degree murder in the boy’s death.)