Saturday, September 10

This Day In History

• 1608   John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony council in Virginia.
  
• 1813   Oliver H. Perry sent the message, ''We have met the enemy, and they are ours,'' after an American naval force defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812.
  
• 1846   Elias Howe of Spencer, Mass., received a patent for his sewing machine.
  
• 1939   Canada declared war on Germany during World War II.
  
• 1945   Vidkun Quisling was sentenced to death in Norway for collaborating with the Nazis.
  
• 1948   American-born Mildred Gillars, the Nazi wartime radio broadcaster known as ''Axis Sally,'' was indicted in Washington, D.C. for treason.
  
• 1955   ''Gunsmoke'' premiered on CBS.
  
• 1963   Twenty black students entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Ala., following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace, who resisted integration.
  
• 1977   Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to be executed by the guillotine in France.
  
• 1988   Steffi Graf of West Germany achieved tennis' first Grand Slam since Margaret Court in 1970 by winning the U.S. Open women's final.
  
• 1989   Hungary stopped enforcing East German visa restrictions and opened its borders, beginning a flood of emigration that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall two months later.
  
• 1998   President Bill Clinton met with members of his Cabinet to apologize and ask forgiveness in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
  
• 2000   NBC's ''The West Wing'' won a record nine Emmy awards, including best drama series.
  
• 2002   Florida's first big test of its new elections system turned into a nightmare as polling stations opened late and problems cropped up with new touchscreen voting machines.
  
• 2002   Switzerland became the 190th member of the United Nations.
  
• 2003   Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, 46, was stabbed in a Stockholm department store; she died the next day.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1839   Isaac Kauffman Funk (publisher: the Funk of Funk and Wagnalls dictionary; died Apr 4, 1912)
  
• 1929   Arnold Palmer (golf champion: 1st million $ winner; Masters Champion: [1958, 1960, 1962, 1964], U.S. Open [1960], British Open [1961, 1962])
  
• 1948   Margaret Trudeau (Sinclair) (author: Beyond Reason; Canada’s 1st Lady   wife of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau [1968-1979])