Today in History.....Sept. 12

On this day in …

* 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into the river that now bears his name
* 1943, German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by the Italian government
* 1944, during World War II, U.S. Army troops entered Germany for the first time, near Trier
* 1960, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy addressed the issue of his Roman Catholicism, telling a Protestant group in Houston, "I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me."
* 1986, Joseph Cicippio, the acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut, was kidnapped by practitioners of that "religion of peace"; he was released in December 1991
* 1995, the Belarussian military shot down a hydrogen balloon during an international race, killing its two American pilots, John Stuart-Jervis and Alan Fraenckel