Today in History....September 1

On this day in …

1775, Richard Penn and Arthur Lee, representing the Continental Congress, present the so-called Olive Branch Petition to the Earl of Dartmouth. Britain’s King George III, however, refused to receive the petition, which, written by John Dickinson, appealed directly to the king and expressed hope for reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain

1807, former Vice President Aaron Burr was found innocent of treason

1939, World War II began as Nazi Germany invaded Poland

1951, A the United States, Australia and New Zealand signed a mutual defense pact, the ANZUS treaty

1961, the Soviet Union ended a moratorium on atomic testing with an aboveground nuclear explosion in central Asia

1969, Muammar al-Qaddafi, a 27-year-old Libyan army captain, leads a successful military coup against King Idris I of Libya. Idris was deposed and Qaddafi was named chairman of Libya's new governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council

1985, Seventy-three years after it sunk to the North Atlantic ocean floor, a joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The sunken liner was about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic

2004, yelling "Allahu akbar", a group of practitioners of that "religion of peace" storms a school in southern Russia and takes more than 1,000 people hostage. The terrorists demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from the disputed nearby region of Chechnya. September 1 was the first day of a new school year for millions of students across Russia, a day of celebration in schools that both parents and students traditionally attend. Nearly 340 people, about half of them children, died in the ensuing three-day ordeal