TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Sept. 12, 2001

Stunned rescue workers continued to search for bodies in the World Trade Center’s smoking rubble a day after a terrorist attack that shut down the financial capital, badly damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. President Bush, branding the attacks in New York and Washington “acts of war,” said “this will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil” and that “good will prevail.”

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1846

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

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.

1959

The Soviet Union launched its Luna 2 space probe, which made a crash landing on the moon. The TV Western series “Bonanza” premiered on NBC.

1962

In a speech at Rice University in Houston, President John F. Kennedy reaffirmed his support for the manned space program, declaring: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

1974

Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by Ethiopia’s military after ruling for 58 years.

1977

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

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.