Today in History: September 11

1609: Sailing for the Dutch East India Company, Englishman Henry Hudson lands for the first time on Manhattan Island.

1786: Delegates from five U.S. states (Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia) meet at Annapolis, Maryland.  They will end the meeting four days later with a call for a constitutional convention.

1789: New York lawyer Alexander Hamilton is named the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

1789: Sir Edward Hall Alderson, Puisne Baron of the Exchequer and author of Hadley v. Baxendale, is born at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.

1816: Carl Zeiss, the founder of the famed optics company that bears his name, is born at Weimar, Germany.

1823: Economist and stock speculator David Ricardo, the father of “comparative advantage,” dies at Gatcombe Park, England.

1847: Stephen Foster’s hit song Oh, Susanna premieres at a saloon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1897: The 600-year-old African kingdom of Kaffa comes to an end with the capture and deposition of its last king and its incorporation into Menelik II’s Ethiopian Empire.

1941: Ground is broken on the world’s largest office building, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

1955: The World Wildlife Fund is founded.  It will later successfully defend its WWF trademark against the World Wrestling Federation, now World Wrestling Entertainment.

1987: CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, angry at being preempted for a tennis match, becomes the first network anchor to stalk off the set and leave nothing but dead air.  Critics say it helped his ratings.

1996: Two of America’s historic railroads merge, as the Union Pacific buys the Southern Pacific.

2001: The 9/11 attacks destroy the New York World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon.