Sept. 8:

1504, Michelangelo’s towering marble statue of David was unveiled to the public in Florence, Italy.

1900, Galveston, Texas, was struck by a hurricane that killed an estimated 8,000 people; it remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

1964, public schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia, reopened after being closed for five years by officials attempting to prevent court-ordered racial desegregation.

2022, Queen Elizabeth II, who spent more than seven decades on the British throne, died at age 96; her 73-year-old son became King Charles III.

Sept. 9:

1776, the second Continental Congress formally adopted the name “United States of America,” replacing the “United Colonies of North America.”

1957, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win the U.S. National Championships, which is now known as the U.S. Open.

1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction, a measure primarily concerned with protecting voting rights. It also established a Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sept. 10:

1608, John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony council in Virginia.

1963, 20 Black students entered Alabama public schools following a standoff between federal authorities and Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace.

1979, four Puerto Rican nationalists imprisoned for a 1954 attack on the U.S. House of Representatives and a 1950 attempted killing of President Harry S. Truman were freed from prison after being granted clemency by President Jimmy Carter.

2008, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was powered up for the first time, successfully firing the first beam of protons through its 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) underground ring tunnel.

Sept. 11:

1814, an American fleet scored a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.

1941, groundbreaking took place for the Pentagon.

2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed as 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized control of four jetliners, sending two of the planes into New York’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania. It remains the deadliest terror attack in history.

2012, a mob armed with guns and grenades launched a fiery nightlong attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost and a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Sept. 12:

1857, the S.S. Central America (also known as the “Ship of Gold”) sank off the coast of South Carolina after sailing into a hurricane in one of the worst maritime disasters in American history; 425 people were killed and thousands of pounds of gold sank with the ship to the bottom of the ocean.

1940, the Lascaux cave paintings, estimated to be 17,000 years old, were discovered in southwestern France.

1994, truck driver Frank Eugene Corder piloted a stolen single-engine Cessna airplane into restricted airspace in Washington, D.C., and crashed it into the South Lawn of the White House.

2013, Voyager 1, launched 36 years earlier, became the first man-made spacecraft ever to leave the solar system.

Sept. 13:

1788, the Congress of the Confederation authorized the first national election and declared New York City the temporary national capital.

1948, Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was elected to the U.S. Senate; she became the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.

1993, at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

Sept. 14:

1861, the first naval engagement of the Civil War took place as the USS Colorado attacked and sank the Confederate private schooner Judah off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

1901, President William McKinley died in Buffalo, New York, of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin eight days prior; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him, becoming the youngest-ever U.S. president at age 42.

1927, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan died in Nice, France, when her scarf became entangled in a wheel of the sports car in which she was riding.

1994, on the 34th day of a strike by players, Acting Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced the 1994 season was over.

– Associated Press