TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 12, the 255th day of 2018.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

On Sept. 12, 1942, during World War II, a German U-boat off West Africa torpedoed the RMS Laconia, which was carrying Italian prisoners of war, British soldiers and civilians; it’s estimated more than 1,600 people died while some 1,100 survived after the ship sank. The German crew, joined by other U-boats, began rescue operations. (On September 16, the rescue effort came to an abrupt halt when the Germans were attacked by a U.S. Army bomber; as a result, U-boat commanders were ordered to no longer rescue civilian survivors of submarine attacks.)

ON THIS DATE

In 1846, Elizabeth Barrett secretly married Robert Browning at St. Marylebone Church in London.

In 1953, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1960, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy addressed questions about his Roman Catholic faith, telling the Greater Houston Ministerial Association,“I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

In 1977, South African black student leader and anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, 30, died while in police custody, triggering an international outcry.

In 1992, the space shuttle Endeavour blasted off, carrying with it Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space; Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space; and Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese national to fly on a U.S. spaceship. Police in Peru captured Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman. Actor Anthony Perkins died in Hollywood at age 60.

In 1994, a stolen, singleengine Cessna crashed into the South Lawn of the White House, coming to rest against the executive mansion; the pilot, Frank Corder, was killed.

In 2012, the U.S. dispatched an elite group of Marines to Tripoli, Libya, after the mob attack in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Ten years ago: A Metrolink commuter train struck a freight train head-on in Los Angeles, killing 25 people. (Federal investigators said the Metrolink engineer, Robert Sanchez, who was among those who died, had been text-messaging on his cell phone and ran a red light shortly before the crash.)

Five years ago: Omar Hammami, an American who became one of Somalia’s most visible Islamic rebels, was killed by rivals in the alQaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab. One year ago: Crews worked to repair the lone highway connecting the Florida Keys, where 25 percent of the homes were feared to have been destroyed by Hurricane Irma; more than 9 million Floridians, or nearly half the state’s population, were still without power in the latesummer heat.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“We must be willing to pay a price for freedom, for no price that is ever asked for it is half the cost of doing without it.”— H.L. Mencken, American author and journalist (1880-1956).