Today in History

Today in History Today is Monday, Sept. 6, the 249th day of 2021. There are 116 days left in the year. Today’s Highlights in History: On Sept. 6, 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. On this date: In 1901, President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz (CHAWL’-gawsh) at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. (McKinley died eight days later; Czolgosz was executed on Oct. 29.) In 1909, American explorer Robert Peary sent a telegram from Indian Harbor, Labrador, announcing that he had reached the North Pole five months earlier. In 1943, 79 people were killed when a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed and crashed in Philadelphia. In 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. In 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. In 1991, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In 1995, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s record by playing his two-thousand-131st consecutive game. In 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. In 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. In 2007, opera star Luciano Pavarotti died in Modena, Italy, at the age of 71. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, pounded Puerto Rico with heavy rain and powerful winds; authorities said more than 900,000 people were without power. (Hurricane Maria, which would destroy the island’s power grid, arrived two weeks later.) In 2019, Zimbabwe’s president announced that Robert Mugabe, the country’s former leader who was forced to resign after a 37-year rule, had died at the age of 95; he had taken power after white minority rule ended in 1980. Ten years ago: A man with a rifle opened fire in an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nevada, killing three uniformed National Guard members and a woman having breakfast with her husband; gunman Eduardo Sencion also shot himself and died in the parking lot. Convoys of Moammar Gadhafi loyalists, including his security chief, fled Libya, crossing the Sahara into Niger. Five years ago: On the campaign trail, Democrat Hillary Clinton accused Republican Donald Trump of insulting America’s veterans and pressing dangerous military plans, while Trump declared ‘œour country is going to hell’� because of policies he said Clinton would make even worse.