Sept. 13 historic events
1759 During the final French and Indian War, the British defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham overlooking Quebec City.
1788 The United States’ Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the country’s first presidential election, and New York City becomes the temporary capital of the U.S..
1814 The British fail to capture Baltimore, Maryland. Turning point in the War of 1812.
1814 Francis Scott Key writes The Star-Spangled Banner.
1848 Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage incredibly survives a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions.
1943 Chiang Kai-shek became president of China.
1948 Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.
1953 Nikita Khrushchev appointed secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1971 A four-day inmates’ rebellion at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York ended as police and guards stormed the prison; the ordeal and final assault claimed 43 lives.
1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands at the White House after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.
1997 Funeral services were held in Calcutta, India, for Nobel peace laureate Mother Teresa.
1998 Former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace died at age 79.
1999 A bomb blamed by authorities on Chechen rebels devastated an eight-story apartment building in Moscow, killing at least 124 people.
2000 Former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee pleaded guilty in Albuquerque, N.M., to one count of mishandling nuclear secrets. Lee, who had been held in solitary confinement for nine months, was set free with an apology from U.S. District Judge James Parker.
2001 Secretary of State Colin Powell named Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect in the terror attacks on the United States; limited commercial flights resumed for the first time in two days.
2006 Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards died at age 73.
2008 Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston and surrounding areas.