TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1997

A public funeral was held for Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in London, six days after her death in a car crash in Paris. In Calcutta, India, weeping masses gathered to pay homage to Mother Teresa, who had died the day before at age 87.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1888

Diplomat and financier Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. was born in Boston.

1901

President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

1909

American explorer Robert Peary sent a telegram from Indian Harbor, Labrador, announcing that he had reached the North Pole five months earlier.

1916

The first self-serve grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders.

1943

79 people were killed when a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed and crashed in Philadelphia.

1972

The Summer Olympics resumed in Munich, West Germany, a day after the deadly hostage crisis that claimed the lives of eleven Israelis and five Arab abductors.

1985

All 31 people aboard a Midwest Express Airlines DC-9 were killed when the Atlantabound jetliner crashed just after takeoff from Milwaukee’s Mitchell Field.

1995

Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s record by playing his two-thousand-131st consecutive game.

2002

Meeting outside Washington, D.C. for only the second time since 1800, Congress convened in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of September 11.