Ripken matches Gehrig’s record
1995 - Baltimore Orioles star Cal Ripken equalled one of the most revered feats in American sports, playing in his 2,130th consecutive game to match the once-thought untouchable record of Lou Gehrig. To thunderous cheers of a sellout crowd at Camden Yards, the greying, 35-year-old shortstop became baseball’s new ‘iron man’ and a national hero by showing up to work as he has for every game in the last 13 years, since May 30, 1982. And Ripken did more than just show up, getting three hits in five at-bats - a sixth-inning home run and two singles, one of them a hustling infield hit — as the Orioles shut out the California Angels 8-0. The whole Orioles team contributed to the big night, totalling six home runs — including four in the second to tie a club record.
September 5
1839 - The First Opium War begins in China.
1860 - Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia and Turkey sign treaty to restore order in Syria after massacre of Christians by Druse.
1905 - Treaty of Portsmouth ends Russo-Japanese War.
1972 - Eleven Israeli athletes are killed at the Munich Olympics.
1975 - An IRA bomb explodes at the Park Lane Hilton Hotel in London, killing two people.
1980 - St Gotthard in the Swiss Alps, the world’s longest auto tunnel, opens.
1986 - Commandos of the Pakistan Army storm a hijacked Pan Am jumbo jet, killing 17 people.
1987 - Israeli jets blast Palestinian militant bases near Sidon, Lebanon, killing 41 people and wounding 60.
1996 - Ramzi Yousuf, alleged mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is convicted with two other men of planning to blow up a dozen US commercial airliners.
1997 - Mother Teresa dies in Kolkata of a heart attack
1998 - North Korea’s parliament elects Kim Jong-il to the presidency, completing the communist world’s first hereditary succession.
1999 - Kenyan star Noah Ngeny breaks the longest standing men’s world track record, the 1,000 metres, running a time of 2min 11.96sec in Italy.
2000 - Tuvalu joins the United Nations.
2002 - Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai survives an assassination attempt in Kandahar.
2005 - A Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashes in Indonesia killing 149 people.
2012 - A powerful explosion at a fireworks factory in Sivakasi, India, kills at least 52 people.
