This Day in History

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September 17

The Netherlands remembers Operation Market Garden on this date.


Events

1630 – The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.

1787 – The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia.

1814 – Francis Scott Key finishes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", later to be the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner".

1849 – American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.

1862 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan halts the northward drive of Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army in the single-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history, with 22,717 total casualties.

1908 – The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes, killing Selfridge, who becomes the first airplane fatality.

1916 – World War I: Manfred von Richthofen ("The Red Baron"), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.

1925 – Frida Kahlo suffers near-fatal injuries in a bus accident in Mexico, causing her to abandon her medical studies and take up art.

1954 – The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding



is first published.

1961 – The world's first retractable-dome stadium, the Civic Arena



opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1976 – The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, is unveiled by NASA.

1983 – Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America.

1991 – The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet.

2001 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression.

2011 – Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City.