Sept. 7 historic events
70 C.E. A Roman army under General Titus occupies and plunders Jerusalem.
1533 England’s Queen Elizabeth I was born in Greenwich.
1822 Brazil declared its independence from Portugal.
1901 The Peace of Beijing ended the Boxer Rebellion in China.
1927 TV pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth succeeded in transmitting an image through purely electronic means by using a device called an image dissector. (a.k.a. television)
1940 the German air force began its blitz on London during World War II. (A few years later, the U.S. and Britain repaid the favor, bombing and largely leveling parts of Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg.)
1963 The Pro Football Hall of Fame was dedicated in Canton, Ohio.
1969 Senate Republican leader Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois died at age 73.
1977 The Panama Canal treaties, calling for the United States to turn over control of the waterway to Panama, were signed in Washington, D.C.
1977 Convicted Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy was released after serving more than four years in prison.
1986 Desmond Tutu was installed as the first black to lead the Anglican Church in southern Africa.
1990 Kimberly Bergalis of Fort Pierce, Fla., came forward to identify herself as the woman who had been infected with AIDS, apparently by her late dentist. (She died the following year.) (She and several other patients of Dr. Jefferey Acer contracted AIDS. Although a motive was never uncovered, medical experts concluded that Acer, for reasons unknown, had deliberately infected them.)
1996 Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot on the Las Vegas Strip; he died six days later at age 25.
1997 Mobutu Sese Seko, the former dictator of Zaire, died in exile in Morocco at age 66.
1998 St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire equaled Roger Maris’ single-season home run record as he hit No. 61 in a game against the Chicago Cubs. (Years later, when questioned by the senate about steroid use, he responded “I’m not going to go into the past or talk about my past”.)
2006 Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confirmed he was the source of a leak that had disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, saying he didn’t realize Plame’s job was covert.
2008 Troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed in government conservatorship. (…to be followed by bailouts of Citibank, Chrysler, GM, Bank of America…)