TODAY IN HISTORY

Armed Forces Day (São Tomé and Príncipe)

Defence Day or Army Day (Pakistan)

Flag Day (Bonaire)

Independence Day (Swaziland), celebrates the independence of Swaziland from the United Kingdom in 1968

National Coffee Ice Cream Day (United States)

Unification Day (Bulgaria)

1980 Samuel Peter Nigerian heavyweight boxer

1980 Joseph Yobo Nigerian footballer

Toyin Ojora-Saraki (born 6 September 1964) is a healthcare philanthropist and the Founder-President of Wellbeing Foundation Africa.

2007 Sep 6, In Nigeria 5 people, including two policemen, were shot dead in a failed attempt to rob a bank in Lagos.

2011 Sep 6, Nigeria's secret police announced that they had arrested five suspected members of a radical Muslim sect accused of bombing an election office (April 8) and a church (July 10) near the oil-rich nation's capital. A bomb went off in Maiduguri disrupting a three-week lull in bombings in the violence-torn city.

2012 Sep 6, In Nigeria an association of mobile phone companies said at least 24 towers have been attacked across the north, likely causing damage worth millions of dollars. At least nine masts were burned down in Maiduguri. Hours later security forces killed seven suspected Boko Haram sect members in Maiduguri.

2013 Sep 6, In Nigeria Anglican Archbishop Ignatius Kattey and his wife were kidnapped in Port Harcourt. His wife was soon released.

2014 Sep 6, Nigerian soldiers fought off rebels advancing on Maiduguri, Borno state, headquarters of the military campaign against the insurgency and the birthplace of Boko Haram. The nearby towns of Duhu, Shuwa, Kirshinga and others fell in assaults over the last 24 hours. Army soldiers fled when hundreds of insurgents in stolen military armored personnel carriers, trucks and motorcycles attacked Gulak, an administrative headquarters of Adamawa state.

1915 First tank produced

On this day in 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour. However, improvements were made to the original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.

1966 Architect of apartheid assassinated

South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death by a deranged messenger during a parliamentary meeting in Cape Town. The assailant, Demetrio Tsafendas, was a Mozambique immigrant of mixed racial descent–part Greek and part Swazi.

As minister of native affairs and later as South African leader, Verwoerd oversaw the introduction and application of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies. As prime minister from 1958, he instituted an intricate system of laws separating whites, Africans (blacks), Coloureds, and Asians, and resettled blacks in backwater reservations. These policies provoked anti-apartheid demonstrations by blacks, which were brutally crushed by government forces at Sharpeville and elsewhere. When, in April 1960, Verwoerd miraculously survived being shot twice in the head by an English farmer, he proclaimed that his survival was evidence of God’s approval of his work. During the next few years, Verwoerd’s government arrested anti-apartheid leaders such as Nelson Mandela and sentenced them to long prison terms on the basis of various convictions.

1997 Some 2.5 billion TV viewers watch Princess Diana’s funeral

On this day in 1997, an estimated 2.5 billion people around the globe tune in to television broadcasts of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris the week before. During her 15-year marriage to Prince Charles, the son of Queen Elizabeth II and the heir to the British throne, Diana became one of the most famous, most photographed people on the planet. Her life story was fodder for numerous books, television programs and movies and her image appeared on countless magazine covers, including those of People and Vanity Fair. After her death, she remained an iconic figure and a continual source of fascination to the media and entertainment world.

1997 Elton John performs a re-written “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s funeral “The people’s princess” was the label Great Britain’s newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to use in describing the late Princess Diana in his first public statement following her death. It was a sensitive and understated way to refer to Diana’s tremendous popularity among the British public despite her estrangement from England’s royal family. Pop legend Elton John chose a more dramatic form of tribute: On September 6, 1997, at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Elton John—a man not given to understatement—gave a tear-jerking performance of “Candle in the Wind,” his 1973 Marilyn Monroe tribute rewritten in honor of the deceased princess.

2007 Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti died at age 71.

1941 Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.

2004 Former President Bill Clinton underwent successful heart bypass surgery.