Today is Wednesday, Sept. 6, the 249th day of 2017. There are 116 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On September 6, 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 October 29.)
On this date:
In 1861, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant occupied Paducah, Kentucky, during the Civil War.
In 1916, the first self-serve grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders.
In 1925, the silent film horror classic "The Phantom of the Opera," starring Lon Chaney, had its world premiere at the Astor Theater in New York.
In 1939, the Union of South Africa declared war on Germany.
In 1943, 79 people were killed when a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed and crashed in Philadelphia.
In 1954, groundbreaking took place for the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in western Pennsylvania.
In 1966, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger died in Tucson, Arizona, at age 86, eight days before her birthday. South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd (fehr-FOORT') was stabbed to death by an apparently deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.
In 1970, Palestinian guerrillas seized control of three U.S.-bound jetliners. (Two were later blown up on the ground in Jordan, along with a London-bound plane hijacked on Sept. 9; the fourth plane was destroyed on the ground in Egypt. No hostages were harmed.)
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 1985, all 31 people aboard a Midwest Express Airlines DC-9 were killed when the Atlanta-bound jetliner crashed just after takeoff from Milwaukee's Mitchell Field.
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 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.
