TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, Sept. 25, the 269th day of 2020. There are 97 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Sept. 25, 1957, nine Black students who’d been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division.
On this date:
■ In 1789, the first United States Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.)
■ In 1904, a New York City police officer ordered a female automobile passenger on Fifth Avenue to stop smoking a cigarette. (A male companion was arrested and later fined $2 for “abusing” the officer.)
■ In 1911, ground was broken for Boston’s Fenway Park.
■ In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson collapsed after a speech in Pueblo, Colo., during a national speaking tour in support of the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY’).
■ In 1956, the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable officially went into service with a threeway ceremonial call between New York, Ottawa and London.
■ In 1962, Sonny Liston knocked out Floyd Patterson in round one to win the world heavyweight title at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
■ In 1974, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tommy John underwent an experimental graft reconstruction of the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow of his throwing arm to repair a career-ending injury; the procedure, which proved successful, is now referred to as “Tommy John surgery.”
■ In 1978, 144 people were killed when a Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 727 and a private plane collided over San Diego.
■ In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court.
■ In 1992, NASA’s Mars Observer blasted off on a $980 million mission to the red planet (the probe disappeared just before entering Martian orbit in August 1993).
■ In 2016, golf legend Arnold Palmer, 87, died in Pittsburgh. Jose Fernandez, 24, ace righthander for the Miami Marlins, was killed in a boating accident with two friends off Miami Beach.
■ In 2018, Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison for drugging and molesting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home. President Donald Trump denounced the “ideology of globalism” and praised his own administration’s achievements in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly that drew headshakes and even laughter from fellow world leaders.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama, in his weekly radio and Internet address, said the Republicans’ plan to slash taxes and cut spending if the GOP were to retake the House in November was no more than “an echo of a disastrous decade we can’t afford to relive.” Three crew members, including American astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, touched down safely, although a day late, in Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz capsule following a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station.
Five years ago: House Speaker John Boehner abruptly announced his resignation. President Barack Obama laid out a fresh threat of sanctions for economic espionage emanating from China, even as he and President Xi Jinping pledged their countries would not conduct or support such hacking. During a visit to New York City, Pope Francis offered comfort to 9/11 victims’ families at ground zero, warnings to world leaders at the United Nations and encouragement to schoolchildren in Harlem. International leaders at the United Nations approved an ambitious 15-year plan to tackle the world’s biggest problems, from eradicating poverty to preserving the planet.