TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Thursday, September 14, the 258th day of 2017. There are 108 days left in the year.

1723 Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena lays down the first stone of Fort Manoel in Malta.

1741 George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah.

1752 The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).

1763 Seneca warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Devil’s Hole during Pontiac’s War.·

1791 The Papal States lose Avignon to Revolutionary France.

1808 Finnish War: Russians defeat the Swedes at the Battle of Oravais.

1812 Napoleonic Wars: The French Grande Armée enters Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city.

1846 Jang Bahadur and his brothers massacre about 40 members of the Nepalese palace court.

1901 U.S. President William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.

1917 Russia is officially proclaimed a republic.

1936 Raoul Villain, who assassinated the French Socialist Jean Jaures, is himself killed by Spanish Republicans in Ibiza

1939 World War II: The Estonian military boards the Polish submarine ORP Orzel in Tallinn, sparking a diplomatic incident that the Soviet Union will later use to justify the annexation of Estonia.

1940 Ip massacre: The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians, kill 158 Romanian civilians in Ip, Salaj, a village in Northern Transylvania, an act of ethnic cleansing.

1958 The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere.·

1960 The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.

1979 Afghan President Nur Muhammad Taraki is assassinated upon the order of Hafizullah Amin, who becomes the new president.

1997 81 killed as five bogies of the AhmedabadHowrah Express plunge into a river in Bilaspur district of Madhya Pradesh, India.

2000 Microsoft releases Windows ME.

2001 Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks.

2007 Late-2000s financial crisis: The Northern Rock bank experiences the first bank run in the United Kingdom in 150 years.

2015 The first observation of gravitational waves was made, announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016.