This Day in History – September 11
Today is the 254th day of 2014. There are 111 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
2001: Terrorists crash two hijacked aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre in New York City, bringing down the twin 110-storey towers, killing more than 2,700 people. Another hijacked jetliner slams into the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing at least 189 people. A fourth hijacked plane crashes in rural southern Pennsylvania, killing 44 people.
OTHER EVENTS
1499: French forces take Milan, Italy, with little opposition.
1783: American statesman and philosopher Benjamin Franklin negotiates a peace settlement between the United States, Great Britain and France; calling it the Treaty of Paris.
1936: US President Franklin Roosevelt dedicates Boulder Dam — now Hoover Dam — by pressing a key in Washington to signal the startup of the dam’s first hydroelectric generator in Nevada.
1955: Thirteen US Air Force men are killed when a B-29 plane crashes in the Pacific between Japan and Formosa.
1990: US President George H W Bush addresses a national television audience to gain support for his deployment of US military forces to the Persian Gulf region to confront the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
1993: In front of human rights observers, a prominent supporter of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is dragged from a mass and assassinated outside a church in Haiti.
1996: Iraq fires two missiles at US F-16 jets patrolling a “no-fly” zone in northern Iraq. Both missiles missed, but the United States responds by sending B-52 bombers to the region.
1998: Independent counsel Kenneth Starr tells the US Congress there are 11 grounds for impeachment of President Bill Clinton; Russian lawmakers approve Yevgeny Primakov as prime minister.
2002: The entire 21-member Palestinian cabinet resigns after it becomes evident that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could not prevent a vote of no-confidence in the cabinet by the Palestinian Legislative Council.
2003: Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh dies in a hospital after being stabbed repeatedly the previous day by an unidentified male attacker while shopping at a department store in Stockholm.
2004: A US soldier admits abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, receiving a lighter sentence in return for his testimony against others charged in the scandal.
2006: The Islamic group Hamas makes a deal to share power with the more moderate Fatah headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after six months of crushing sanctions imposed to force the militants to recognise Israel and end violence.
2007: The World Health Organisation issues an alert urging more doctors to travel to Congo to combat an outbreak of Ebola fever. The Congolese government declares a quarantine of the area in south-eastern Congo.
2009: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns the country’s reformist opposition it will face a “harsh response” for confronting the Islamic establishment.
2012: Mainly ultraconservative protesters climb the walls of the US Embassy in Egypt’s capital and bring down the American flag, replacing it with a black Islamic flag to protest a US-produced film attacking the Prophet Muhammad.
