By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 11, the 254th day of 2018. There are 111 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Sept. 11, 2001, on America’s single-worst day of terrorism, nearly 3,000 people were killed as 19 al-Qaida members hijacked four passenger jetliners, sending two of the planes smashing into New York’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and the fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania.

On this date:

In 1297, Scottish rebels led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray defeated English troops in the Battle of Stirling Bridge during the First War of Scottish Independence.

In 1789, Alexander Hamilton was appointed the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

In 1814, an American fleet scored a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.

In 1857, the Mountain Meadows Massacre took place in present-day southern Utah as a 120-member Arkansas immigrant party was slaughtered by Mormon militiamen aided by Paiute Indians.

In 1936, Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) began operation as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a key in Washington to signal the startup of the dam’s first hydroelectric generator.

In 1941, groundbreaking took place for the Pentagon. In a speech that drew accusations of anti-Semitism, Charles A. Lindbergh told an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa, that “the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration” were pushing the United States toward war.

In 1954, the Miss America pageant made its network TV debut on ABC; Miss California, Lee Meriwether, was crowned the winner.

In 1967, the comedy-variety program “The Carol Burnett Show” premiered on CBS.

In 2003, actor John Ritter died six days before his 55th birthday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif. — the same hospital where he was born in 1948.

— — —