Today in History

Today in History Today is Saturday, Sept. 25, the 268th day of 2021. There are 97 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Sept. 25, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court. On this date: In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the Pacific Ocean. In 1789, the first United States Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.) In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed a measure establishing Sequoia National Park. In 1911, ground was broken for Boston’s Fenway Park. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson collapsed after a speech in Pueblo, Colo., during a national speaking tour in support of the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY’). In 1956, the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable officially went into service with a three-way ceremonial call between New York, Ottawa and London. In 1957, nine Black students who’d been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. In 1978, 144 people were killed when a Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 727 and a private plane collided over San Diego. In 1992, NASA’s Mars Observer blasted off on a $980 million mission to the red planet (the probe disappeared just before entering Martian orbit in August 1993). In 1991, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie died in Lyon, France, at age 77. In 2015, House Speaker John Boehner abruptly announced his resignation. In 2018, Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison for drugging and molesting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home. (After nearly three years in prison, Cosby went free in June 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction.) Ten years ago: Declaring they’d been detained because of their nationality, not their actions, Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, two American hikers held for more than two years in an Iranian prison, returned to the United States. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah decreed that women would, for the first time, have the right to vote and run in local elections due in 2015. Wangari Maathai (wan-GAH’-ree mah-DY’), 71, the first African woman recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, died in Nairobi. Five years ago: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met separately in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, giving each candidate fresh foreign policy talking points on the eve of their first presidential debate. Golf legend Arnold Palmer, 87, died in Pittsburgh. Jose Fernandez, 24, ace right-hander for the Miami Marlins, was killed in a boating accident with two friends off Miami Beach. Country singer Jean Shepard, a Grand Old Opry staple, died in Nashville at 82. One year ago: The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state at the U.S. Capitol, making history as the first woman so honored in America. With coronavirus numbers soaring across France, officials said only 1,000 spectators would be allowed each day at the French Open tennis tournament. Gov. Ron DeSantis lifted all restrictions on restaurants and other businesses in Florida and banned local fines against people who refused to wear masks as he sought to reopen the state’s economy despite the spread of the coronavirus. The Mid-American Conference, the first major college football league to postpone its season because of the pandemic, became the final one to jump back in, making it 10 out of 10 conferences that would play in the fall.