On Sept. 5, 1698, Russia’s Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards.
In 1774 the first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia.
In 1793 France’s Reign of Terror began.
In 1836 Sam Houston was elected president of the Republic of Texas.
In 1882 the nation’s first Labor Day parade was held, in New York.
In 1914 the First Battle of the Marne began in World War I.
In 1939 the U.S. proclaimed neutrality in World War II.
In 1945 Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a Japanese-American accused of being wartime broadcaster Tokyo Rose, was arrested in Yokohama. (After six years in prison, she was pardoned in 1977 by President Gerald Ford.)
In 1957 “On the Road,” by beat writer Jack Kerouac, was published.
In 1958 Russian author Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” was published in the U.S.
In 1972 Arab terrorists attacked the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympics; by the time the siege ended, 11 Israelis, five guerrillas and a police officer were killed.
In 1975 President Gerald Ford escaped an attempt on his life by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of Charles Manson, in Sacramento.
In 1977 the U.S. launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft two weeks after launching Voyager 2. Also, West German industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the Baader-Meinhof gang.
In 1992 a strike that had idled nearly 43,000 GM workers ended as members of a UAW local in Lordstown, Ohio, approved a new agreement.
In 1994 a UN-sponsored population conference opened in Egypt, with Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland lashing out at the Vatican and Muslim fundamentalists by defending abortion rights and sex education.
In 1995 France resumed nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
In 1997 Mother Teresa died in Calcutta at 87.
In 1999 Islamic insurgents launched attacks in southern Russia, hours after a bomb smashed a building housing Russian military families — the first of four apartment building explosions blamed on Chechen rebels that killed about 300 people. Also, “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt died in Pebble Beach, Calif., at age 84.
In 2001 sports commentator Heywood Hale Broun, 83, died in Kingston, N.Y.
In 2003 Actress Gisele MacKenzie died at 76 in Burbank, Calif.
In 2005 President Bush nominated John Roberts Jr. for chief justice.
