Today In History. September 10

September 10 is the 253rd day of the year (254th in leap years). There are 112 days remaining until the end of the year

 

1936 – First World Individual Motorcycle Speedway Championship, Held at London's (England) Wembley Stadium

1942 – World War II: The British Army carries out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to re-launch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign.

1946 – While riding a train to Darjeeling, Sister Teresa Bojaxhiu of the Loreto Sisters' Convent claimed to have heard the call of God, directing her "to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them". She would become known as Mother Teresa.

1960 – At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Abebe Bikila becomes the first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal, winning the marathon in bare feet.

1967 – The people of Gibraltar vote to remain a British dependency rather than becoming part of Spain.

1972 – The United States suffers its first loss of an international basketball game in a disputed match against the Soviet Union at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.

1974 – Guinea-Bissau gains independence from Portugal.

 1976 – A British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident and an Inex-Adria DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia, killing 176.

1977 – Hamida Djandoubi, convicted of torture and murder, is the last person to be executed by guillotine in France.

1987 – Pope John Paul II starts his 11-day papal visit to Fort Simpson, Canada and afterwards to several southern and western cities in the United States.

1990 – The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire, the largest church in Africa, is consecrated by Pope John Paul II.

2000 – Operation Barras successfully frees six British soldiers held captive for over two weeks and contributes to the end of the Sierra Leone Civil War.

2001 – Charles Ingram cheats his way into winning one million pounds on a British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

2001 – Antônio da Costa Santos, mayor of Campinas, Brazil is assassinated.

2003 – Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden, is fatally stabbed while shopping, and dies the following day.

2008 – The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history, is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.