Today in History

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 5, the 248th day of 2018. There are 117 days left in the year.

Today's Highlights in History:

On Sept. 5, 1972, the Palestinian group Black September attacked the Israeli Olympic delegation at the Munich Games; 11 Israelis, five guerrillas and a police officer were killed in the resulting siege.

On this date:

In 1698, Russia's Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards.

In 1774, the first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia.

In 1882, the nation's first Labor Day was celebrated with a parade in New York. (Although Labor Day now takes place on the first Monday of September, this first celebration occurred on a Tuesday.)

In 1939, four days after war had broken out in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation declaring U.S. neutrality in the conflict.

In 1945, Japanese-American Iva Toguri D'Aquino, suspected of being wartime broadcaster "Tokyo Rose," was arrested in Yokohama. (D'Aquino was later convicted of treason and served six years in prison; she was pardoned in 1977 by President Gerald R. Ford.)

In 1960, at the Rome Olympics, American boxer Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) defeated Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland to win the light-heavyweight gold medal; Wilma Rudolph of the United States won the second of her three gold medals with the 200-meter sprint.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed legislation making aircraft hijackings a federal crime.

In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford escaped an attempt on his life by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a disciple of Charles Manson, in Sacramento, California.

In 1986, four hijackers who had seized a Pan Am jumbo jet on the ground in Karachi, Pakistan, opened fire when the lights inside the plane failed; a total of 20 people were killed before Pakistani commandos stormed the jetliner.

In 1997, breaking the royal reticence over the death of Princess Diana, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II delivered a televised address in which she called her former daughter-in-law "a remarkable person." Mother Teresa died in Calcutta, India, at age 87; conductor Sir Georg Solti died in France at age 84.

In 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt in Kandahar, hours after an explosives-packed car tore through a Kabul market.

In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts to succeed the late William Rehnquist as chief justice of the United States. An Indonesian jetliner crashed, killing 149 people, including 49 on the ground; 17 passengers survived.

Ten years ago: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became the highest-ranking American official in half a century to visit Libya, where she met Moammar Gadhafi. Europe's Rosetta space probe flew by the Steins asteroid 250 million miles from Earth. Publishing giant Robert Giroux, who'd guided and supported dozens of great writers from T.S. Eliot and Jack Kerouac to Bernard Malamud and Susan Sontag, died in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, at age 94.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama, in St. Petersburg for a G-20 summit, pressed fellow world leaders to support a U.S. strike on Syria; however, he encountered opposition from Russia, China and even the European Union, who said it was too soon for military action.

One year ago: President Donald Trump announced that he was phasing out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program protecting young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally, but said he was giving Congress six months to come up with an alternative; he later tweeted that if Congress couldn't do so, he would "revisit" the issue. Hurricane Irma strengthened to a Category 5 storm as it approached the northeast Caribbean on a path toward the United States.

Today's Birthdays: Former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul A. Volcker is 91. Comedian-actor Bob Newhart is 89. Actress-singer Carol Lawrence is 86. Former NFL All-Pro quarterback and college football Hall of Famer Billy Kilmer is 79. Actor William Devane is 79. Actor George Lazenby is 79. Actress Raquel Welch is 78. Movie director Werner Herzog is 76. Singer Al Stewart is 73. Actor-director Dennis Dugan is 72. College Football Hall of Famer Jerry LeVias is 72. Singer Loudon Wainwright III is 72. Soul/rock musician Mel Collins is 71. "Cathy" cartoonist Cathy Guisewite is 68. Actor Michael Keaton is 67. Country musician Jamie Oldaker (The Tractors) is 67. Actress Debbie Turner-Larson (Marta in "The Sound of Music") is 62. Actress Kristian Alfonso is 55. Rhythm-and-blues singer Terry Ellis is 55. Rock musician Brad Wilk is 50. TV personality Dweezil Zappa is 49. Actress Rose McGowan is 45. Actress Carice Van Houten is 42. Rock musician Kyle O'Quin (Portugal. The Man) is 33. Actor Andrew Ducote is 32. Actress Kat Graham is 32. Olympic gold medal figure skater Yuna Kim is 28. Actor Skandar Keynes is 27.

Thought for Today: "Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized by a madness which forces them to commit the very acts which makes it certain that what they dread shall happen." -- Dame Rebecca West, Irish author and journalist (1892-1983).