TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Sept. 11, 2001

On America’s single-worst day of terrorism, nearly 3,000 people were killed as 19 alQaida members hijacked four passenger jetliners, sending two of the planes smashing into New York’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and the fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1297

Scottish rebels led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray defeated English troops in the Battle of Stirling Bridge during the First War of Scottish Independence.

1814

An American fleet scored a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.

1857

The Mountain Meadows Massacre took place in present-day southern Utah as a 120-member Arkansas immigrant party was slaughtered by Mormon militiamen aided by Paiute Indians.

1936

Boulder Dam began operation as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a key in Washington to signal the startup of the dam’s first hydroelectric generator.

1941

Groundbreaking took place for the Pentagon. In a speech that drew accusations of anti-Semitism, Charles A. Lindbergh told an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa, that “the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration” were pushing the United States toward war.