On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shaking
hands at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York,
when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached
him and fired two shots into his chest. The president rose slightly
on his toes before collapsing forward, saying “be careful how you
tell my wife.”

During the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, in the early
morning of September 5, a group of Palestinian terrorists
stormed the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes,
killing two and taking nine others hostage.

The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September,
in return for the release of the hostages, they demanded that
Israel release over 230 Arab prisoners being held in Israeli jails
and two German terrorists.

In an ensuing shootout at the Munich airport, the nine Israeli
hostages were killed along with five terrorists and one West
German policeman. Olympic competition was suspended for
24 hours to hold memorial services for the slain athletes.

Black September terrorist looks from the balcony of an apartment where Israeli Olympic team members are held hostage.

With terrorists holed up in the Israeli athletes’ quarters,
swarms of German policemen, in uniform and plain
clothes, move in and seal off the area.

A German policeman leans against a wall outside the
apartment.

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American
students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis on this
day, in which the students were initially prevented from entering
the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President
Dwight D. Eisenhower.

A photograph of Elizabeth Eckford attempting to enter
Little Rock School on 4th September, 1957. 

Gov. Orval E. Faubus of Arkansas (1910 – 1994)

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969)

On September 2, 1969, America’s first automatic teller machine
(ATM) made its public debut, dispensing cash to customers at
Chemical Bank in Rockville Centre, New York. ATMs went on
to revolutionize the banking industry, eliminating the need to
visit a bank to conduct basic financial transactions.

By the 1980s, these money machines had become widely
popular and handled many of the functions previously
performed by human tellers, such as check deposits and
money transfers between accounts. Today, ATMs are as
indispensable to most people as cell phones and e-mail.

Sir Thomas Bland (center) unveiled the first ATM by
drawing back a curtain, and actor Reg Varney (center) 
made the first cash withdrawal.

Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally
surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II.

By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone
conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed.

At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese
island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was
put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic” and set for November 1945.

General Douglas MacArthur speaks to open the surrender ceremonies on the USS Missouri.

General Douglas MacArthur signs the surrender documents. Behind him stand General Jonathan M. Wainwright and
General Arthur E. Percival.