Today is Wednesday, Sept. 10, the 253rd day of 2025
with 112 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Saturn.
On this date in history:
In 1813, U.S. naval units under the command of Capt. Oliver Perry defeated a British squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie.
In 1823, Simon Bolivar, who led the wars for independence from Spain in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, was named president of Peru with dictatorial powers.
In 1846, Elias Howe received a patent for the sewing machine.
In 1963, Black students entered all-White public schools of Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile in Alabama after U.S. President John F. Kennedy federalized the state's National Guard.
In 1977, Tunisian immigrant Hamida Djandoubi became the last person France executed by guillotine. He was convicted of torturing and strangling his girlfriend because she refused to become a prostitute.
In 1981, Pablo Picasso's epic painting, Guernica, which depicted the air bombing of the Spanish town by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian planes, was delivered to Spain for the first time since it was painted in 1937. The painter, who was living in France, said it could not be returned to Spain until democracy was restored.
In 2002, Switzerland and Timor-Leste joined the United Nations, expanding the membership roll to 191. It eventually increased to 193.
In 2008, scientists in a Geneva lab activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful subatomic particle accelerator, built over a 14-year period and costing an estimated $8 billion. It had to be shut down after nine days for repairs.
In 2011, nearly 200 people died after an overloaded ferry capsized and sank off the coast of Tanzania. More than 600 were rescued.
In 2014, in a speech to the nation, President Barack Obama said the United States and a "broad coalition" will "degrade and ultimately destroy" Islamic State terrorists. The coalition declared victory over the group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, in July 2017, though the group remains active.
In 2022, Britain's King Charles III was formally proclaimed monarch during a ceremony at St. James' Palace in London one day after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
In 2024, Pope Francis drew a crowd of 600,000 people in an outdoor mass reflecting on the joy of childbirth in Timor-Leste.
