Here’s what happened in history the week of Sept. 5-11.
Sept. 5
1774: The first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia.
1836: Sam Houston won the first presidential election in the Republic of Texas.
1957: Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” was published.
1972: Palestinian militants attacked the Israeli Olympic delegation at the Munich Games, killing two and taking nine others hostage; five of the militants, a German police officer and all nine hostages were killed in the following 24 hours.
1975: President Gerald R. Ford survived an assassination attempt by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of Charles Manson.
Sept. 6
1975: Eighteen-year-old Czechoslovakian tennis star Martina Navratilova, who was in New York for the U.S. Open, requested political asylum in the United States.
1995: Baltimore Orioles star Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking Lou Gehrig’s 56-year‑old MLB record.
Sept. 7
1921: The first Miss America Pageant was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
1940: Nazi Germany began an intense bombing campaign on Britain during World War II with an air attack on London, known as The Blitz, resulting in more than 40,000 civilian deaths.
1996: Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot and mortally wounded in Los Angeles
Sept. 8
1504: Michelangelo’s towering marble statue of David was unveiled to the public in Florence, Italy.
1565: Spanish expedition established the first permanent European settlement in North America at present-day St. Augustine, Florida.
1664: The Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to the British, and it was renamed New York.
1951: Forty-nine nations in San Francisco signed a peace treaty with Japan.
2022: Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96.
Sept. 9
1776: The second Continental Congress officially instated the “United States” instead of “United Colonies.”
1850: California became the 31st state of the union.
1956: Elvis Presley first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
1971: Prisoners seized control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York, beginning a siege that ended up claiming 43 lives.
Sept. 10
1608: John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony council in Virginia.
1963: Twenty Black students entered Alabama public schools following a standoff between federal authorities and the state’s governor, George C. Wallace.
Sept. 11
1789: Alexander Hamilton was appointed the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
1936: Boulder Dam — later renamed the Hoover Dam — began operation after President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a key in Washington, D.C., to signal the dam’s first hydroelectric generator startup.
1954: The Miss America pageant made its network TV debut on ABC.
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 Centers and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania.
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.