TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

2006

President George W. Bush acknowledged for the first time that the CIA was running secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation had forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1901

President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. (McKinley died eight days later; Czolgosz was executed on Oct. 29.)

1909

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

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.

1975

18-year-old tennis star Martina Navratilova of Czechoslovakia, in New York for the U.S. Open, requested political asylum in the United States.

1991

The Soviet Union recognized the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

1995

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

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.