Today in History: September 13

1791: King Louis XVI of France accepts a new constitution.  He’ll be executed anyway.

1806: British Whig leader Charles James Fox dies at London.  He probably holds the record for profligacy by an English politician, having managed to run up £140,000 in debt by age 25.

1857: Chocolate tycoon Milton Snavely Hershey is born to a Mennonite family on a farm near Derry Church, Pennsylvania.  His first candy business will fail in 1883, but he’ll go on to try again.

1860: John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing (Nebraska Law 1893), the only U.S. lawyer to achieve the rank of General of the Armies, is born near Laclede, Missouri.

1899: Real estate man Henry Hale Bliss becomes the first American to be killed by an automobile when he’s run down by a taxi at 74th St. and Central Park West in New York City.

1985: Japan’s Nintendo introduces one of the most successful video games of all time, Super Mario Bros.

1998: George Corley Wallace (Alabama Law 1942), the front-runner for the 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination until he was felled by the bullet of an attempted assassin, dies at Montgomery, Alabama.