Today in History....September 12

On this day in …

1609, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into the river that now bears his name

1912, plans for the first coast-to-coast highway were unveiled. A memorial to Abraham Lincoln, it was to become an American icon, the predecessor to Route 66

1914, during World War I, the First Battle of the Marne ended in an Allied victory against Germany

1938, Adolf Hitler, ym"sh, demanded self-determination for the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia
1943, German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by the Italian government

1944, the second Quebec Conference opened with President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in attendance

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."

1974, in Boston, Massachusetts, opposition to court-ordered school "busing" turns violent on the opening day of classes

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

2001, stunned rescue workers continued to search for bodies in the World Trade Center's smoking rubble a day after a terrorist attack that shut down the financial capital, badly damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. President Bush, branding the attacks in New York and Washington "acts of war," said "this will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil" and that "good will prevail."

2005, officials in New Orleans reported the bodies of more than 40 mostly elderly patients were found in a flooded-out hospital. Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown resigned, three days after losing his onsite command of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.