TODAY IN HISTORY
In 1846 Elizabeth Barrett secretly married Robert Browning at St. Marylebone Church in London.
In 1914 during World War I, the First Battle of the Marne ended in an Allied victory against Germany.
In 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 Sept. 16, the rescue effort came to a 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.)
In 1953 Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.
In 1958 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Cooper v. Aaron, unanimously ruled that Arkansas officials who were resisting public school desegregation orders could not disregard the high court’s rulings.
In 1959 the Soviet Union launched its Luna 2 space probe, which made a crash landing on the moon. Also in 1959 The TV Western series “Bonanza” premiered on NBC.
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 1986 Joseph Cicippio, the acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut, was kidnapped (he was released in December 1991).
In 1987 reports surfaced that Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden had borrowed, without attribution, passages of a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock for one of his own campaign speeches. (The Kinnock report, along with other damaging revelations, prompted Biden to drop his White House bid.)
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. Also in 1992 Police in Peru captured Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman. Also in 1992 Actor Anthony Perkins died in Hollywood at age 60.
In 1994 a stolen, single-engine Cessna crashed into the South Lawn of the White House, coming to rest against the executive mansion; the pilot, Frank Corder, was killed.
In 2011 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.) Also in 2011 Hurricane Ike began battering the Texas coast. Also in 2011 Grand Ole Opry star Charlie Walker died in Hendersonville, Tennessee. at age 81.
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. President Barack Obama strongly condemned the violence, and vowed to bring the killers to justice; Republican challenger Mitt Romney accused the administration of showing weakness in the face of tumultuous events in the Middle East.
In 2016 Omar Hammami, an American who became one of Somalia’s most visible Islamic rebels, was killed by rivals in the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab. Also in 2016
NASA announced that Voyager 1, launched 36 years earlier, had crossed a new frontier, becoming the first man-made spacecraft ever to leave the solar system. Also in 2016 American inventor Ray Dolby, 80, founder of Dolby Laboratories, died in San Francisco.
In 2020 Crews worked to repair the lone highway connecting the Florida Keys, where 25% 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 late-summer heat. Also in 2020 Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced that he was resigning amid sex abuse allegations. Also in 2020 Gay rights pioneer Edith Windsor, whose landmark Supreme Court case struck down parts of a federal anti-gay-marriage law, died in New York at age 88.