September 11 in History

General Augusto Pinochet led a CIA-backed military coup against democratically elected President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Chilean Air Force jets bombed La Moneda presidential palace while tanks surrounded the building. Allende died inside, almost certainly by suicide with an AK-47 given to him by Fidel Castro. Pinochet established a military junta that ruled Chile for seventeen years, executing roughly 3,200 political opponents, torturing 40,000, and forcing 200,000 into exile. The regime's economic policies, designed by University of Chicago economists known as the "Chicago Boys," created Latin America's freest market and most unequal society simultaneously. Pinochet left power after losing a 1988 plebiscite but was never convicted of his crimes.

Pete Rose lined a single to left field off San Diego's Eric Show on September 11, 1985, breaking Ty Cobb's all-time hit record of 4,191 that had stood for 57 years. Rose was 44 years old and had been playing major league baseball for 23 seasons. He finished his career with 4,256 hits, a record that still stands. Rose's style was all hustle: he ran to first base on walks, slid headfirst into bases, and played every game as if it were his last. Four years later, in 1989, MLB Commissioner Bart Giamatti permanently banned Rose from baseball for betting on games, including games he managed for the Cincinnati Reds. Rose was excluded from the Hall of Fame ballot, and his record exists in a strange limbo: unbroken but tainted.

Nineteen hijackers from al-Qaeda seized four commercial aircraft on the morning of September 11, 2001. American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.; United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. Passengers on United Flight 93 learned of the other attacks through phone calls, voted to storm the cockpit, and brought the plane down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m.; the North Tower at 10:28 a.m. Nearly 3,000 people died. The attacks triggered the invasion of Afghanistan, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the most extensive overhaul of American security since World War II.

Isaac II Angelos killed the imperial bodyguard Stephen Hagiochristophorites on September 11, 1185, triggering a popular uprising that overthrew the tyrannical Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos. Andronikos had seized power in 1182 through a campaign of mass murder, executing the previous emperor's family and purging the aristocracy. When Hagiochristophorites came to arrest Isaac, the young nobleman killed him with his sword and fled to Hagia Sophia, where he rallied the citizens of Constantinople. The mob stormed the palace. Andronikos was captured while attempting to flee by boat and was tortured to death by the crowd over three days. Isaac II's reign brought relative stability but his weak military leadership set the stage for the catastrophic Fourth Crusade of 1204.

William Wallace and Andrew Moray exploited a narrow wooden bridge across the River Forth to annihilate a much larger English army at Stirling on September 11, 1297. The English commander, the Earl of Surrey, allowed his troops to cross the bridge in small groups rather than seeking a wider ford. When roughly half the English army had crossed, Wallace attacked, trapping them in a loop of the river where they couldn't retreat or form proper battle lines. An estimated 5,000 English soldiers were killed, including the hated tax collector Hugh de Cressingham, whose skin was allegedly stripped from his body by the Scots. The victory made Wallace the Guardian of Scotland and inspired a nationwide rebellion against English occupation.

Oliver Cromwell stormed the town of Drogheda on September 11, 1649, after the Royalist garrison refused to surrender. Cromwell's New Model Army breached the walls on the third assault and showed no quarter. An estimated 3,500 people were killed, including the entire garrison, Catholic priests who were found in the town, and an unknown number of civilians. Cromwell defended the massacre in a letter to Parliament, calling it "a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches." He intended the slaughter as a terror tactic to force other Irish garrisons to surrender without a fight, and several did. Drogheda became the defining atrocity of the Cromwellian conquest and remains one of the most emotionally charged events in Irish-British relations.