12 September

Events490 BC - Athens defeats Persia at the Battle of Marathon - see also 12 August; origin of the marathon long-distance race (attributed to Pheidippides)1213 - Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon, at the Battle of Muret.1229 - The Aragonese army under the command of James I of Aragon disembarks at Santa Ponça, Mallorca, with the purpose of conquering the island.1609 - Henry Hudson discovers the Hudson River.1683 - Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna - Several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.1814 - Battle of North Point: An American detachment halts the British land advance to Baltimore in the War of 1812.1846 - Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning.1847 - Mexican-American War: The Battle of Chapultepec begins. U.S. Army deserters in the Saint Patrick's Battalion who fought alongside the Mexican army are hanged en masse for treason by the order of  General Winfield Scott.1848 - Switzerland became a Federal state.1857 - The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship carried 13-15 tons of gold from the San Francisco Gold Rush.1874 The District of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada is founded.1890 - Salisbury, Rhodesia, is founded.1906 - Newport Transporter Bridge is opened in Newport, South Wales by Viscount Tredegar.1910 - Premiere performance of Gustav Mahler's 8th symphony in Munich (with a chorus of 852 singers, with an orchestra of 171 players. Mahler's rehearsal assistant conductor was Bruno Walter)1930 - Wilfred Rhodes ends his 1110-game first-class career by taking 5 for 95 for H.D.G. Leveson Gower's XI against the Australians.1933 - Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.1938 - Adolf Hitler demands autonomy for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.1940 - Cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France.1940 - The Hercules Powder Company in Kenvil, New Jersey explodes, killing 51 people and injuring over 200. 1942 - World War II: RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks.1942 - World War II: First day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge during the Guadalcanal campaign.  U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field on Guadalcanal are attacked by Imperial Japanese Army forces.1943 - World War II: Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, is rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi, by German commando Otto Skorzeny.1944 - World War II: The liberation of Serbia from Nazi Germany and the Chetniks continues. Bajina Bašta in western Serbia is among those liberated cities.1947 - The U.S. Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath.1948 - Invasion of the State of Hyderabad by the Indian Army on the day after the Pakistani leader Jinnah's death to limit damage control. It lead to genocide of nearly 40,000 Hyderabadi Muslims by the Indian Army and Hindu mobs.1953 - Nikita Khrushchev is elected first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.1959 - Bonanza premiers. First regularly-scheduled TV program presented in color.1959 - The Soviet Union launches a large rocket, Lunik II, at the moon.1970 - Palestinian terrorists blow up three hijacked airliners in Jordan, continuing to hold the passengers hostage in various undisclosed locations in Amman.1974 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, 'Messiah' of the Rastafari movement, is deposed following a military coup by the Derg.1974 - Juventude Africana Amilcar Cabral is founded in Guinea-Bissau.1977 - South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko is killed in police custody.1979 - Indonesia is hit with an earthquake that measures 8.1 on the Richter scale.1980 - Military coup in Turkey.1983 - A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, was robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros .1990 - The two German states and the Four Powers sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German re-unification.1992 - NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission. On board is Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space.1992 - Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, is captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path's leadership fell as well. 1994 - Frank Eugene Corder crashes a Cessna 150 into the White House's south lawn, striking the West wing and killing himself.1995 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's All Star Team beats the Harlem Globetrotters 91-85, ending the Globetrotters' 24-year, 8,829-game winning streak.2001 - Article V of the NATO agreement is invoked for only the second time (the other being in Bosnia) in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States of America.2001 - Ansett Australia, Australia's first commercial interstate airline, collapses due to increased strain on the international airline industry leaving 10000 people unemployed.2003 - The United Nations lifted sanctions against Libya after that country agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.2005 - The red-green coalition, led by Jens Stoltenberg, wins the Norwegian parliamentary election, taking 87 of 169 seats in the parliament.2005 - Israel completes its withdrawal of all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.2005 - A blackout in Los Angeles affects millions of Californians.2005 - Hong Kong Disneyland opens in Penny's Bay, Lantau Island, Hong Kong.2007 - Shinzo Abe announced he resigns as Prime Minister of Japan.2007 - Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada was convicted for the crime of plunder.2007 - An earthquake that measures 8.4 on the Richter scale occurred off the coast of Indonesia, producing a small tsunami.
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