November 19, 1986: The Mafia Commission Trial Verdict

Yes, kids, that young guy at the top is Rudy Giuliani.

Bottom row, left to right: John Savarese, Michael Chertoff and Gil Childers.

November 19, 1986: A verdict is handed down in Federal Court in New York City. It is the biggest blow ever dealt to organized crime in America.

A little background: In 1931, in order to keep the peace after the devastating civil war within American organized crime, known as the Castellammarese War, Charles "Lucky" Luciano formed "The Commission." It consisted of the bosses of what became known as "the Five Families" of New York City, the boss of "the Chicago Outfit," and the boss of the Buffalo crime family. Basically, it was meant to mediate disputes, a "League of Nations" for "the American Mafia" or "The Mob."

The names of the Five Families have changed over time, but, for most of their histories, have generally been considered to be, in alphabetical order (probably the safest way to, as they say, show the proper respect): 

* Bonanno: The holdings of the recent capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses), Salvatore Maranzano, killed on Luciano's orders on September 10, 1931, were handed by Luciano to Joseph Bonanno, who led the family until 1968. By 1986, the boss was Philip "Rusty" Rastelli.

Rusty Rastelli

* Colombo: Founded in 1928 by Joe Profaci, and run by him until his death in 1962 (killed by cancer, an enemy more ruthless than any mobster), it was renamed for Joseph Colombo, who ran it from 1964 to 1971, when he had to give up leadership due to an assassination attempt failing to kill him, but succeeding in paralyzing him. In 1986, the boss was Carmine Persico, known as "Junior" and "The Snake."

Carmine Persico

* Gambino: Founded in 1931 by Vincent Mangano. He ran it until 1951, when he disappeared, allegedly killed on the order of his underboss, Albert Anastasia. Anastasia became the boss of all bosses, until he was killed in 1957, on the order of Carlo Gambino, whose name became attached to it, and ran it until his natural death in 1976. He was succeeded by "Big" Paul Castellano.

Paul Castellano

* Genovese: Possibly the most powerful of the Five Families, Luciano himself ran it until he was imprisoned in 1936. The next boss was Frank Costello, but he was scared into giving up power in 1957, when, on the order of Vito Genovese, he barely survived a hit by Vincent Gigante. (More about him later.) But Genovese, allegedly the basis for the character of Vito Corleone in The Godfather, was only in power for 2 years before going to prison, where he died. In 1986, the boss appeared to be Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno.

Tony Salerno

* Lucchese: Tommy Gagliano emerged as boss, retiring in 1951, and handing power over to Gaetano "Tommy" Lucchese. Starting in 1973, the boss was Anthony Corallo, known as "Tony Ducks" for his ability to duck convictions.

Tony Corallo

It's important to note that an actual family boss cannot be killed without the permission of The Commission -- in other words, all the other bosses. In other words, the climax of the 1969 novel and the 1972 film The Godfather, Michael Corleone's "Baptism of Fire," could not have happened in real life.

Congress held hearings on organized crime in 1950, with Costello as a key witness, but he dodged questions as best he could. They held hearings again in 1963, with Genovese capo Joseph Valachi becoming the 1st mobster to publicly admit the existence of the American Mafia, The Commission, and many other things. 

Until then, no matter how much information had unofficially leaked out to the public, men in the Mafia had to claim that there's no such thing as the Mafia, to protect themselves and their superiors. This code of silence is part of a larger code of conduct and honor called Omertà.

Starting in 1982, the New York State Organized Crime Task Force began using wiretaps and the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations). On February 25, 1985, the heads of four of the Five Families were arrested and indicted: Corallo, Castellano, Salerno and Rastelli. The fifth boss, Persico, followed soon after.

Castellano didn't make it to trial: On December 16, 1985, getting out of his car to have dinner at Sparks Steak House on East 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan, he was rubbed out. This was not authorized by The Commission. It was ordered by a man who felt he'd been passed over for a leadership post in the Gambino family, and was now, himself, its boss: John Gotti.

The trial was held under the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, at the Federal Courthouse now named for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, at 40 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan.

The U.S. Attorney overseeing the prosecution was a 41-year-old hotshot from Brooklyn named Rudolph W. Giuliani. However, he had a lot on his plate: He was determined to bring the Five Families down, but he was also prosecuting Wall Street insider traders and several corrupt New York City officials. So the actual lead prosecuting attorney in the Commission Trial would be Rudy's Number 2, Michael Chertoff.

The evidence was overwhelming, much of it provided by Angelo Lonardo, the convicted Mob boss of Cleveland, whose connections all over the Midwest, and also in Las Vegas, led him to flip on many of them and put them away, including Joey Aiuppa, the head of the Chicago Outfit on January 22, 1986.

The bosses' lawyers asked for plea deals. Giuliani said no. He showed them the same level of mercy they had shown to others: None. Chertoff presented the evidence. The defense was minimal: Basically, they admitted that the Mafia existed, but that simply being in the Mafia didn't mean that these men were guilty of the charges involved.

On November 19, 1986, following 5 days of deliberations, the jury decided otherwise. Salerno, Corallo and Persico were each sentenced to 100 years in prison and fined $240,000. Rastelli's case was separated from theirs, and he had already been convicted.

Soon, it was revealed that Salerno was just a front for the real Genovese boss, Vincent "the Chin" Gigante. Supposedly the man who killed Anastasia, he had ducked prosecution for many years by pretending to be mentally ill, wandering around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, accompanied by 2 bodyguards. The New York media called him "The Oddfather."

Vincent Gigante

In spite of this image, he was the most powerful of the bosses. Nobody else in the New York Mob would even mention his name: They would just point to their chin. Even Gotti knew better than to "muscle in on his territory." It took until 1997 for him to finally be brought down. It took until 1992, 4 tries, to nail Gotti.

Rastelli was released in 1991, because he was dying of cancer. All dying in custody: Salerno in 1992, Corallo in 2000, Gotti in 2002, Gigante in 2005, and Persico in 2019.

This was not the only major Mob conviction in 1986: On January 21, Joey Aiuppa, boss of the Chicago Outfit, was convicted, and served 10 years in prison. He died in 1997.

Giuliani would ride his successful prosecutions -- for which he was the "show horse," and others, like Chertoff, were the "work horses" -- to being nominated for Mayor of New York by the Republican Party in 1989. He lost to the Democratic nominee, the Manhattan Borough President, David Dinkins, who became the City's 1st black Mayor. It was close: With each man running a mostly positive campaign based on his own record of public service, Dinkins won by 47,000 votes.

For the next 4 years, Giuliani used the City's rising crime -- which had actually begun to go down in 1991, but the perception was otherwise -- and institutional racism to build a 2nd run, in 1993. With Dinkins trying to run a high-road campaign, and Giuliani following the 1977 Ed Koch path of running a low-road campaign, Giuliani won by 54,340 votes. The big shift was liberals scared of crime, but also Orthodox Jews in Giuliani's native Brooklyn, angry at what they falsely called a "pogrom" perpetrated by black criminals in Crown Heights in the Summer of 1991.

Giuliani has been polarizing people ever since. Koch, Mayor from 1978 to 1989, originally supported him, but later wrote a book about him, titled Giuliani: Nasty Man. Giuliani was re-elected in 1997, because he had brought crime down by a lot (thanks in large measure to Democratic President Bill Clinton signing into law a crime bill written by then-Senator Joe Biden and then-Representative Chuck Schumer); but also because his opponent, Ruth Messinger, Dinkins' successor as Manhattan Borough President, ran her campaign as if she barely had a pulse.

Giuliani became "America's Mayor" after the terrorist attack on New York on September 11, 2001. But he tied himself to President George W. Bush's "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists" rhetoric, and began a slide from a man that liberals could, if not like, at least trust, to the aging, psychotic lawyer trying and failing to help Donald Trump in 2020 and 2021. He is now 78 years old.

When he ran for President in 2008, he spent over $80 million, and received no delegates. The previous record for Presidential futility had been former Governor John Connally of Texas: The former Democrat ran in the 1980 Republican Primaries, spending $50 million and winning one delegate.

Chertoff was named U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, serving from 1990 to 1994; U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, serving from 2001 to 2003; Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, serving from 2003 to 2005; and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, serving from 2005 to 2009. Now a few days away from his 69th birthday, he is senior of counsel at Covington & Burling, a Washington-based law firm, and runs the Chertoff Group, a risk-management and security consulting company.

Unlike Giuliani, Chertoff has no official or professional connection to Trump. Far from it: Though still a conservative Republican, in a July 2020 New York Times opinion piece, Chertoff wrote of his concerns that the Trump Administration was hijacking the Department of Homeland Security for political purposes.

*

November 19, 1986 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Philadelphia 76ers, 98-94 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Phoenix Suns, 111-101 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Atlanta Hawks, 111-107 at the Boston Garden.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Detroit Pistons, 119-105 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 112-104 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 117-108 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.

There were 7 games played in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-3 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. The Devils got goals from Jan Ludvig and Mark Johnson, but blew a 2-0 lead. Then they came back from 3-2 down, on goals by Pat Verbeek and, with 1:17 left in regulation, Doug Sulliman.

* The New York Rangers lost to the Edmonton Oilers, 5-4 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton. Ordinarily, there would be no shame in losing to the Wayne Gretzky-era Oilers. But the Rangers were down 4-1 early in the 3rd period, and came back to tie it with 4:08 left in regulation, only to lose on a goal by Glenn Anderson, 1:05 into overtime. Of course, several Oilers, including Anderson and, of course, Mark Messier would help the Rangers win the Stanley Cup in 1994.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Hartford Whalers, 4-1 at the Hartford Civic Center. (It's now named the PeoplesBank Arena.)

* The Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres played to a tie, 4-4 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Philadelphia Flyers and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 2-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Chicago Blackhawks and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 4-4 at the Chicago Stadium.

* And the St. Louis Blues beat the Minnesota North Stars, 7-5 at the St. Louis Arena.

September 23, 2001: The 9/11 Memorial Service at Yankee Stadium

September 23, 2001: New York City holds a memorial service to the victims of the terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center, 12 days earlier. It is held at the largest outdoor seating area within the City's Five Boroughs: Yankee Stadium.

In spite of the Stadium's capacity of 57,545, it is believed that just 20,000 people attended. Most likely, it was because only relatives and colleagues of those lost were permitted to attend, rather than that people were still afraid to gather in big crowds.

All 4 major U.S. TV networks broadcast it live. Prayers were offered by Edward Cardinal Egan, the Archbishop of New York, and also from leaders of Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, and even Muslim congregations, showing that they were all New Yorkers, that they were all Americans, and that they had all felt the losses of that awful Tuesday morning.

Also speaking were Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Governor George Pataki, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The current President, George W. Bush, did not attend. Former Mayors David Dinkins and Ed Koch, and former Governors Mario Cuomo and Hugh Carey, attended, but did not speak.

On September 11, 2002, the Yankees dedicated a Monument to the victims and rescue workers in the Stadium's Monument Park. As with the other Monuments and Plaques, it was moved to the new Yankee Stadium in 2009.

*

September 23, 2001 was a Sunday. Major League Baseball had restarted on Monday, September 17, with the week's worth of postponed games moved to the week after the originally-intended end of the regular season. These games were played on September 23:

* The New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-4 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. The Yankees scored 2 runs in the 8th inning, 1 in the 9th to send the game to extra innings, and 1 in the top of the 10th, when John Parrish walked Bernie Williams with the bases loaded, forcing Nick Johnson home. This made a winning pitcher out of Nick Johnson, in relief of Orlando "El Duque" Hernández.

Cal Ripken, in his last few days as an active player, hit what turned out to be the last home run of his career, his 407th. Johnson homered for the Yankees, going 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs. Derek Jeter got the day off, with Enrique Wilson playing shortstop.

* The New York Mets lost to the Atlanta Braves, 5-4 at Shea Stadium. Brian Jordan led off the top of the 11th inning with a home run, his 2nd homer of the game, making John Smoltz a winning pitcher in relief of Tom Glavine. Joe McEwing hit a home run for the Mets.

* The Colorado Rockies beat the Montreal Expos, 5-3 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 12-6 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Florida Marlins, 5-4 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Johnny Estrada hit a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning to win it. Travis Leed went 4-for-4 with 2 solo homers.

* The Tampa Bay Devil Rays beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 1-0 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Joe Kennedy allowed 4 hits over 7 innings, and Esteban Yan finished the 5-hit shutout. Steve Cox hit a home run in the 1st inning, for the only run of the game.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-1 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Rookie Albert Pujols went 0-for-4.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Royals, 10-2 at the new Comiskey Park (now Rate Field) in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-3 at Miller Park (now American Family Field) in Milwaukee. Ken Griffey Jr. went 2-for-3 with a walk.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-2 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Anaheim Angels, 5-2 at The Ballpark in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-6 at Enron Field (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 11-2 at Qualcomm Stadium (formerly San Diego Stadium and Jack Murphy Stadium). Barry Bonds hit his 65th * and 66th * home runs of the season. Tony Gwynn, in his last few days as an active player, pinch-hit, and did not reach base.

* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Seattle Mariners, 7-4 at the Network Associates Coliseum (as the Oakland Coliseum was then known). Mark Mulder won his 20th game of the season, outpitching Freddy García. Ichiro Suzuki went 1-for-5.

The NFL also returned to action, after postponing the previous weekend's games:

* The New York Jets beat the New England Patriots, 10-3 at Foxborough Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts. (The stadium and the town, officially, had different spellings.) Jet linebacker Mo Lewis knocked Pat quarterback Drew Bledsoe out of the game. Maybe he shouldn't have done that: Bledsoe was replaced at quarterback by Tom Brady. I have a separate entry for this event.

* The New York Giants beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 13-3 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.

* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Carolina Panthers, 24-16 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

* The Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Tennessee Titans, 13-6 at Alltel Stadium (now EverBank Stadium) in Jacksonville, Florida.

* The Miami Dolphins beat the Oakland Raiders, 18-15 at Pro Player Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium) in Miami Gardens, Florida. Jay Fiedler scored on a quarterback sneak with 5 seconds to play, to win the game.

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Detroit Lions, 24-14 at Cleveland Browns Stadium (now Huntington Bank Field) in Cleveland.

* The Cincinnati Bengals beat the Baltimore Ravens, 21-10 at Paul Brown Stadium (now Paycor Stadium) in Cincinnati.

* The Indianapolis Colts beat the Buffalo Bills, 42-26 at the RCA Dome (formerly the Hoosier Dome) in Indianapolis.

* The Chicago Bears beat the Minnesota Vikings, 17-10 at Soldier Field in Chicago.

* The San Diego Chargers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 32-21 at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.

* The Denver Broncos beat the Arizona Cardinals, 38-17 at Sun Devil Stadium (now Mountain America Stadium) in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Arizona.

* The St. Louis Rams beat the San Francisco 49ers, 30-26 at 3Com Park (as Candlestick Park was then known) in San Francisco. The Rams-Niners rivalry had lost a lot since the Rams left Los Angeles, but it would eventually be restored.

* The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Seattle Seahawks, 27-3 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. The Seahawks were playing at the University of Washington's complex while the Kingdome was being torn down, and what is now Lumen Field was built on the site.

* The next night, on ABC Monday Night Football, the Green Bay Packers beat the Washington Redskins, 37-0 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

* And the New Orleans Saints, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a bye week.

September 16, 1992: The Giuliani Police Riot

September 16, 1992: Thousands of off-duty police officers crowd in front of New York’s City Hall to protest against Mayor David Dinkins.

The cops were there to oppose a bill that would have removed the police from the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board, an oversight body that handled allegations of police misconduct, and, crucially, would have made it independent of the Police Department itself. Faced with the prospect of potentially greater civilian accountability, New York City police officers took their anger to the streets.

"The cops held up several of the most crude drawings of Dinkins, black, performing perverted sex acts," Jimmy Breslin, the great New York newspaper columnist then working for Newsday, who was present at the riot, wrote. "'Now you got a n****r right inside City Hall,' one officer reportedly said," Breslin continued. "'How do you like that? A n****r mayor.'" Other officers chanted slogans like "Dinkins gotta go!" and "The mayor's on crack!"

"The mayor doesn’t know why the morale of the New York City Police Department is so low," he said, jabbing his finger in the air. "He blames it on me, he blames it on you. The reason the morale of the Police Department of the City of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone: David Dinkins!"

Giuliani had risen to fame in the mid-1980s, as a U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, prosecuting criminals both low-class, like the Mafia, and high-class, like Wall Street insider traders. He ran for Mayor in 1989, and it was close: Dinkins, then the Borough President of Manhattan, won 50.4 percent of the vote, while Giuliani won 47.8. Dinkins' margin of victory was 47,080, and he became the City's 1st black Mayor.

Crime, rising in New York ever since World War II, peaked in 1990, then started to go down. But events such as the Crown Heights riot of 1991, and the New York media's twisting of events to favor their conservative owners, made Dinkins look like he didn't care about white people. In 1993, Giuliani won a rematch, getting 49.2 percent of the vote, Dinkins 46.4. Giuliani won by 53,367 votes, becoming the City's 1st Republican Mayor elected since John Lindsay in 1965, and its 1st Italian Mayor since Fiorello La Guardia was last elected in 1941.

What made the difference? Giuliani gained 28,000 votes in Brooklyn, 26,000 in Staten Island, 21,000 in Manhattan, 17,000 in Queens, and 8,000 in The Bronx. So it was a Republican get-out-the-vote effort in Staten Island, the whitest, most conservative Borough; but it was also fear of white liberals in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In particular, Jewish votes in both of those Boroughs shifted. Giuliani particularly pandered to Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, led by State Senator Dov Hikind, officially a Democrat, but a very conservative man.

Giuliani never acknowledged or condemned the racism of the 1992 police riot. And his Administration, from January 1, 1994 to December 31, 2001, would have some notorious examples of police brutality. After leaving office, without having to face the voters again, he drifted even further to the right, eventually providing legal counsel for Donald Trump, causing him, as of September 16, 2022, to need legal counsel of his own.

UPDATE: As Jamelle Bouie put it in a column for the August 18, 2023 edition of The New York Times, "The line from 'America's mayor' to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one. The answer to What happened to Rudy Giuliani? is Nothing happened. He is the same man he’s always been."

*

September 16, 1992 was a Wednesday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Chicago White Sox, 9-6 at Yankee Stadium. Don Mattingly went 3-for-5, but Sterling Hitchcock was knocked out of the box in the 3rd inning. and Curt Young barely finished the 5th.

* The New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-4 at Shea Stadium.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-3 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Barry Bonds went 2-for-5.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 2-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Bob Zupcic grounded into a fielder's choice to get the winning run home in the bottom of the 15th inning. Wade Boggs did not play. Paul Molitor went 3-for-7 with an RBI, but Robin Yount went 0-for-5 with 2 walks.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-0 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Mike Mussina pitched a 4-hit shutout. Cal Ripken went 3-for-4.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-3 at the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) in Toronto.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Texas Rangers, 4-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 14-9 at Wrigley Field in Chicaog.

* The Houston Astros beat the San Francisco Giants, 3-1 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The San Diego Padres beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-1 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-2 at the Oakland Coliseum. Rickey Henderson went 1-for-3 with a walk and a stolen base.

* And the California Angels beat the Seattle Mariners, 2-1 at the Kingdome in Seattle. Luis Sojo singled home the winning run in the top of the 13th inning. Ken Griffey Jr. went 0-for-4 with a walk, and was hit with a pitch.

September 11, 2001: The World Trade Center Is Destroyed and the Pentagon Is Attacked

 

September 11 has been a bad day many times.

Particularly in Chile: Santiago, always its largest city and its capital, was destroyed by a neighboring tribe on September 11, 1541. And a CIA-backed coup overthrew President Salvador Allende and installed the fascist Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973.

September 11, AD 9: The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ends, in what is now Bramsche, Lower Saxony, in northwestern Germany. The Roman Empire suffers the greatest defeat of its history, and the Rhine River is established as the border between the Empire and the so-called barbarians for the next 400 years.

Each side brought about 22,000 men to the battle. The Romans, under Publius Quinctilius Varus, lost nearly all of theirs. The Germanic tribes, under Arminius (known to some modern people as "Herman the German"), lost about 5,000. Legend has it that, until he died 5 years later, a distraught Emperor Caesar Augustus would wander the halls of his palace, crying out, "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" Arminius died in AD 21, at around 37 years old, possibly poisoned by an internal competitor.

September 11, 1275: An earthquake occurs in the south of England, causing multiple fatalities and destroying St Michael's Church on Glastonbury Tor.

September 11, 1297: This was another bad day for England, but a good day for Scotland, as William Wallace and Andrew Moray win the Battle of Stirling Bridge, outside Stirling, Scotland.

September 11, 1609: This was a good day in what would become New York: English explorer Henry Hudson and his Dutch crew of the Half Moon land on Manhattan Island, and meet the people living there.

September 11, 1649: Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, carries out the Siege of Drogheda, killing over 2,000 people, including the opposing commander, Sir Arthur Aston, who had been loyal to the executed King Charles I. To this day, Cromwell's name is considered a profanity in Ireland.

September 11, 1697: The Battle of Zenta occurs in what is now Senta, Serbia. The Holy League, led by Hungarian troops and Serbia militia, decisively defeat the Ottoman Empire, killing 30,000 troops and losing only 400. The Great Turkish War ended 2 years later, and was the first time the Ottomans ever lost territory.

September 11, 1708: King Charles XII of Sweden realizes he is not going to conquer Moscow, and turns back. This is the turning point in the Great Northern War, and the beginning of the end for Sweden as a first-rate military and diplomatic power.

Marching on Moscow is never a good idea, especially so late in the year. Charles XII was the first national leader to realize this. He would not be the last.

September 11, 1709: The Battle of Malplaquet is fought at Taisnières-sur-Hon in northern France. John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and an ancestor of Winston Churchill, led an alliance of Britain, the Dutch Republic and the Holy Roman Empire to a costly victory over France.

The War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1714. Although France achieved its goal of the House of Bourbon holding the Spanish throne, neither France nor Spain would ever be so strong a country again.

September 11, 1714: Barcelona surrenders in the War of the Spanish Succession.

September 11, 1776: General George Washington had just lost the Battle of Long Island in what is now Brooklyn Heights, and was about to lose the Battle of Harlem Heights. A peace conference is held in Staten Island, with the main participants being the British Army commander, General William Howe, and established American diplomat Benjamin Franklin. No progress is made. The independence that Franklin had helped declare 2 months earlier is very precarious.

September 11, 1777: The Battle of Brandywine is one of the worst losses in the history of the U.S. Army, and assures the conquest of the nation's capital at the time, Philadelphia, by Howe, who had previously kicked Washington and his Continental Army out of New York City, Washington and his men have to retreat to nearby Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

September 11, 1780: The Sugarloaf Massacre is carried out by Loyalists and Natives outside present-day Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

September 11, 1814: It is America's darkest hour -- darker than on the same day in 2001, because, then, we knew that we had what it took to fight back. We had no such confidence on this day, because our capital of Washington had been burned by the British Army just 18 days before.

On this day, with the British advancing on Baltimore, another British force tries to take Lake Champlain, between the States of New York and Vermont. But an American force led by General Alexander Macomb -- a graduate of New Jersey's Newark Academy (now located in Livingston) -- fights back. The British naval commander, Captain George Downie, is killed.

As a result of this, and knowing that he couldn't supply his forces even if he took the City of Plattsburgh, General George Prevost decides to retreat. It was little more than New York and Vermont militiamen and a few regulars in the U.S. Army, but they won -- and, as their forebears had at nearby Saratoga in 1777, they saved the Hudson Valley, and prevented the British from effectively cutting the young nation in half.

The Battle of Plattsburgh is a prelude to the coming defense of Baltimore. The following day, Major General Robert Ross, the British commander, was killed outside Baltimore at the Battle of North Point. The day after that, the Royal Navy shells Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. The day after that, they give up, and a "Star-Spangled Banner" is raised over the fort. Three months after that, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the War of 1812, and saving America.

Today, a mountain in the nearby Adirondacks is named for Macomb, as are a city in Illinois, and a town and a county in Michigan, near his birthplace of Detroit. He is remembered as The Hero of Plattsburgh.

September 11, 1857: Mormons carry out the Mountain Meadows Massacre, killing 120 people in Mountain Meadows, Utah.

September 11, 1862: The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia has made its 1st invasion of the Union, leading to the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It becomes the deadliest battle ever fought on American soil. The Union win, but General Robert E. Lee and his ANV get away.

September 11, 1881: A rockslide buries parts of the village of Elm, Switzerland, destroying 83 buildings and killing 115 people.

September 11, 1901: President William McKinley is dying from an assassin's bullet in Buffalo, New York, sustained 5 days earlier. He dies in another 5 days, 58 years old. Theodore Roosevelt becomes President.

September 11, 1916: The Quebec Bridge collapses in Quebec City, killing 11.

September 11, 1941: Charles Lindbergh gives an anti-Semitic speech in Des Moines, ruining his reputation.

September 11, 1944: Britain's Royal Air Force bombs Darmstadt, Germany, killing 11,500 people.

September 11, 1948: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan just a year earlier, dies of lungs weakened by cancer and long-term tuberculosis. He was 71.

September 11, 1950: Jan Smuts dies of a heart attack at age 80. Twice Prime Minister of South Africa, he negotiated the Treaty of Vereeniging, and was the only man present at the surrenders of Germany in both World Wars. but in 1948, his party was defeated in a national election, because it wasn't sufficiently committed to apartheid for the voters.

September 11, 1954: Hurricane Edna kills 29 in New England.

September 11, 1961: Hurricane Carla kills 46 in Texas.

September 11, 1968: An Air France crash kills 89 off the coast of Nice.

September 11, 1971: Nikita Khrushchev, ousted as Premier of the Soviet Union 7 years earlier, dies of a heart attack at age 77.

September 11, 1972: A good day in the San Francisco Bay Area: Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, goes into service.

September 11, 1974: An Eastern Air Lines crash kills 71 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

September 11, 1985: The Moimenta-Alcafache train crash kills 150 people in Mangualde, making it the worst rail disaster ever in Portugal. On the same day, in America, the Cincinnati Reds beat the San Diego Padres, 2-0 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Pete Rose, The Reds' 1st baseman and manager singles in the 1st inning, officially breaking Ty Cobb's career record of 4,191 hits.

A later check of the records would find that Cobb actually had 4,189, meaning Rose had broken the record 2 days earlier, in Chicago.

September 11, 1987: Peter Tosh is robbed, tortured and murdered in his home in Kingston, Jamaica. The reggae singer, who came out of Bob Marley’s Wailers to make his own name, was 42. His killer remains in prison.

Actor Lorne Greene also dies on this day. And CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather walks off the set in anger just before a remote broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports, and discussed it with the sports department.

The match, between Steffi Graf and Lori McNeil, ended at 6:32 PM, earlier than expected, but Rather had disappeared. So over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast 6 minutes of dead air. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk.

September 11, 1990: A Faucett Boeing 727 disappears in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada, while being flown from Malta to Peru. The plane had 16 people aboard, and has never been found.

September 11, 1991: Continental Express Flight 2574 crashes near Eagle Lake, Texas, killing 14 people.

September 11, 1992: Hurricane Inika strikes Kaua'i, Hawai'i, killing 7 people and causing $3.1 billion in economic damages.

September 11, 1994: Actress Jessica Tandy dies at age 85. Her husband of 53 years, actor Hume Cronyn, lived on until 2003, at 91.

September 11, 1997: Fourteen Estonian soldiers of the Baltic Battalion are drowned or die of hypothermia during a training exercise in the Kurkse Strait.

The date has been bad since 2001 as well:

September 11, 2002: Johnny Unitas, the Baltimore Colts star once considered the greatest quarterback in football history, died of a heart attack at age 69.

September 11, 2003: Anna Lindh, Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affairs, dies a day after being stabbed in the national capital of Stockholm. She was 46. Her assassin remains in prison. And actor John Ritter, famed for his role on Three's Company, dies of an aortic dissection suffered on the set of his new TV show, 8 Simple Rules. He was just short of turning 55.

September 11, 2004: Fred Ebb dies of a heart attack at age 76. With John Kander, he had written the songs for the musicals Cabaret and Chicago, and the 1977 film New York, New York, whose theme song was sung by the film's star, Liza Minnellli, but became better known for its 1979 recording by Frank Sinatra.

September 11, 2009: M*A*S*H creator Larry Gelbart dies of cancer. He was 81.

September 11, 2012: A total of 315 people are killed in two garment factory fires in Pakistan. And the U.S. Embassy is Benghazi, Libya is attacked, resulting in 4 deaths.

September 11, 2014: Bob Crewe dies at age 83, after years of ill health following a fall. He had been a successful songwriter before working with The Four Seasons, wrote most of their early hits with keyboard player Bob Gaudio, and produced most of their hits.

September 11, 2015: A crane collapses onto the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, killing 111 people and injuring nearly 400 more.

September 11, 2016: Actress and transgender activist Alexis Arquette, of one of America's leading acting families, dies from the effects of AIDS, at age 47.

September 11, 2023: Derna, Libya experiences catastrophic floods after Storm Daniel causes 2 dams to collapse, killing about 6,000 people.

And 2001 wasn't even the first time September 11 was a bad day in New York City. In 1905, the Ninth Avenue Derailment killed 13 people. In 1976, a bomb planted by Croatian terrorist Zvonko Bušić was found at Grand Central Terminal, and an NYPD officer is killed trying to defuse it.

*

September 11, 2001: I woke up that warm, sunny Tuesday morning, unemployed and with no reason to get up early, and, as was always the case at the time, the first thing I did was turn on the radio. It was after 10:30, so it had already all happened.

And the announcer -- a woman whose name I never learned -- on WCBS, 880 on the AM dial, said, "The World Trade Center is gone."

What? What do you mean, "gone"? The World Trade Center is gone? A pair of 110-story skyscrapers -- actually, a seven-building complex -- doesn't just disappear. Gone? What, did aliens come along and beam it up, like on Star Trek?

If it had, there would still, theoretically, have been a chance to get it back. But, no, that was not the case.

Did I hear it right? I had just gotten up. I was still half-asleep. Maybe I misunderstood. So I went to the TV, turned it on, and... nothing. Of course. Every station had its transmitter on 1 World Trade Center. Except one, WCBS, Channel 2. Theirs was, and remains, at the Empire State Building. If you didn't have cable TV, then they were the only ones broadcasting. And all that was left of the World Trade Center was a cloud of black smoke.

The planes:

* American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767, with 92 people on board, took off from Logan International Airport in Boston at 7:59 AM, meant for Los Angeles International Airport, and hit 1 World Trade Center, the North Tower, between the 93rd and 99th floors, at 8:46.

* United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767, with 65 people on board, took off from Logan at 8:14, also meant for Los Angeles, and hit 2 World Trade Center, the South Tower, between the 77th and 85th floors, at 9:03. That's when it became clear that the first one wasn't just a freak accident, like the B-25 that crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in 1945, a much smaller plane that did far less damage and killed far fewer people.

* American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, with 58 people on board, took off from Dulles International Airport in Loudoun County, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., at 8:20, also meant for Los Angeles, was turned back toward Washington, and hit the west wall of the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, also across the Potomac River from Washington, in Arlington, at 9:37. Victims: 184.

* And United Airlines Flight 93, another Boeing 757, with 44 people on board, took off from Newark International Airport in New Jersey at 8:42, meant for San Francisco International Airport. The passengers, having heard on their cell phones about the other planes, decided to fight back, and stopped the hijackers from reaching their target, which U.S. intelligence later decided was the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington. Instead, at 10:03, the plane crashed into a field in rural Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, usually identified by its mailing address of Shanksville, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, and 130 miles northwest of Washington.

The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 AM. In 2003, in commemoration of the magazine's 50th Anniversary, TV Guide listed "South Tower Falls" as the most memorable televised moment ever, topping the 1st manned Moon landing in 1969. The North Tower followed at 10:29 -- mere seconds before I woke up, and the WCBS announcer said, "The World Trade Center is gone."

There's an overpass about a mile from where I was living at the time, where State Route 18 goes over the New Jersey Turnpike. It's next to the Tower Center complex, the 23-story "minor league twin towers," as I called them, where the bus takes me into Manhattan. From that overpass, on a clear day, you could see the World Trade Center. On 9/11/01, all you could see was a plume of black smoke, going south, seemingly forever.

Three days later, I stood on that overpass again, and it was a plume of white smoke. No, it didn't mean there was a new Pope, or that the Towers would be back.

My father worked at the World Trade Center, as an engineering consultant for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the complex's operator, for six months, before he decided that the commute was too long, and he quit. That was two years before the attack. It was a week before he found out that everyone he worked with got out all right.

Not so lucky were, depending whose figures you believe, and whether you count people who got sick from working the rescue and salvage jobs afterward, about 2,750 people. Eight of them were from my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. As far as I know, I never met any of them.

East Brunswick's memorial

There were 1,747 who, at the time, were living in the State of New York. Of those, 1,147 lived in New York City. There were 694 from New Jersey, including 3 from my parents' hometown of Newark, and 3 from next-door Bloomfield, where they lived when I was born.

There were 92 from Massachusetts, 81 from Virginia, 65 from Connecticut, 50 from Maryland, 49 from California, 30 from Pennsylvania, 11 from the District of Columbia, 10 from New Hampshire, 9 from Illinois, 6 from Texas; 5 each from Florida and Rhode Island; 4 each from Alabama, Georgia and Maine; 3 each from Louisiana, North Carolina and Ohio; 2 each from Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Oklahoma; and 1 each from Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

There were 13 from Britain, 6 from Germany, 5 from Canada, 3 from Australia, 3 from Japan, 2 from China, and 1 each from Bermuda, El Salvador, Grenada, Ireland, Israel and Sweden.

At first, we didn't know how bad it would be. The front page of the New York Daily News on September 13 suggested 10,000 people had died. It was quickly revised to 5,000, and then, when records were checked to see who was in the Twin Towers and hadn't been found alive, and checking against duplicate entries, down to 3,000, still the worst one-day loss of life on American soil since the American Civil War.

Among the notable people who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks were television producer David Angell, conservative TV legal analyst Barbara Olson, and hockey player-turned-scout Garnet "Ace" Bailey, each of them on board one of the planes intended for Los Angeles. (Bailey was no relation to the old-time hockey star Irvine "Ace" Bailey.) Alice Trillin, a teacher and film producer, and wife of author Calvin Trillin, also died that day, but her death was separate from the attacks.

In 2001, smartphones were few and far between, a lot of us still hadn't really figured out the Internet, and for those of us in the New York Tri-State Area who still didn't have cable TV, Channel 2 was the only station we had left. So we had one channel, and the same damn thing on, for an entire week.

And that's all we watched: Images of the carnage, updates from police and fire department leaders, politicians making statements, pundits speculating about America's response to al-Qaeda and its allies. The parallel was made to the 4 days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In my lifetime to that point, the only comparable event had been the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

But distractions were few. No regular TV programming. Certainly, no sports, for an entire week, before the various leagues started up again.

Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of New York, put his municipal counter-terrorism center in 7 World Trade Center. They had to evacuate it. He and the others inside nearly died when the North Tower collapsed. He bounced back from this blunder to represent the City and its recovery before the public, and the editors of Time magazine named him their Person of the Year, a distinction (not an award) it gives to the person they think most affected the news during the calendar year, ahead of President George W. Bush -- and also ahead of Osama bin Laden, who approved and ordered the attacks.

For reasons that aren't worth getting into here, it took until May 1, 2011 for the victims to be avenged. The official memorial at the site was opened on September 11, 2011, the 10th Anniversary of the attacks. And the new One World Trade Center opened on November 3, 2014, with a height purposely set to match the year of America's independence: 1,776 feet.

A temporary memorial at the Pentagon, for the lives lost there, was dedicated on September 12, 2002. A permanent memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2008. The Flight 93 National Memorial was dedicated at the Pennsylvania field on September 10, 2011, the day before the 10th Anniversary. The names of the victims at these sites are also inscribed at the main memorial in Manhattan.

For those of us too young to remember the JFK assassination -- and maybe for those of us who are old enough -- 9/11 remains the most shocking event of our lifetimes. It shouldn't be.

After all, a foreign foe killed 3,000 of us, and our government said it would do whatever it took. And it lied. But the next government did what it took.

*

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 happened in the morning, so there was time to decide to take what was, then as now, the obvious step of postponing most professional sports indefinitely.

Minor League Baseball was already in its Playoffs, and canceled the rest of them. This enabled the Brooklyn Cyclones, a 1st-year farm team of the Mets, to be declared Co-Champions of the Class A New York-Penn League, along with the other team in the Final, the Pennsylvania-based Williamsport Crosscutters. They won their 1st full Pennant in 2019.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced that games would resume the following week, on Monday, September 17.

The games that were scheduled for Tuesday, September 11 through Sunday, September 16 were moved to the week after the end of the regular season, thus pushing the postseason back a week, resulting in the 1st-ever November games that counted in MLB.

These are the games that were supposed to be played on September 11, and got pushed back to Monday, October 1:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-1 at the old Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

* The New York Mets lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-1 at Shea Stadium in Queens.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 1-0 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

* The Tampa Bay Devil Rays beat the Boston Red Sox, 10-3 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. (The Tampa Bay team is now named simply the Rays.

These are the games that were supposed to be played on September 11 that got pushed back to Tuesday, October 2:

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Atlanta Braves, 3-1 at Turner Field in Atlanta.

* The Florida Marlins beat the Montreal Expos, 4-3 at what was then named Pro Player Stadium in Miami Gardens. (The Expos are now the Washington Nationals, the Marlins are the Miami Marlins, they play in Marlins Park, and Pro Player Stadium is now named Hard Rock Stadium.)

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at Comerica Park in Detroit.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-1 at Miller Park in Milwaukee.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Houston Astros, 4-1 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Colorado Rockies, 10-1 at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix. (Now named Chase Field.)

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 5-2 at what was then named Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. (It's now SDCCU Stadium, and the Padres now play at Petco Park.)

* The Seattle Mariners beat the team then known as the Anaheim Angels, 14-5 at Edison International Field. (The team is now known as the Los Angeles Angels, and their ballpark as Angel Stadium.)

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Texas Rangers, 9-4 at the Oakland Coliseum.

Not in the country affected by the attacks, UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, decided that the day's Champions League matches would go ahead as scheduled, in spite of some of the teams objecting:

* Arsenal lost to Real Mallorca, 1-0 at Estadio Son Moix on Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain.

* Liverpool and Boavista of Portugal played to a draw, 1-1 at Anfield in Liverpool.

* FC Nantes beat PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands, 4-1 at Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes, France.

* Panathinaikos of Athens, Greece beat Schalke 04, 2-0 at Parkstadion in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

* Real Madrid beat AS Roma, 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

* Dynamo Kyiv and Borussia Dortmund of Germany played to a draw, 2-2 at Olimpiyskiy Natsionalnyi Sportovyi Kompleks in Kyiv, Ukraine.

* Lokomotiv Moscow and Anderlecht of Belgium played to a draw, 1-1 at the Central Dynamo Stadium of Moscow.

* And Galatasaray beat SS Lazio of Rome, 1-0 at Al Sami Yen Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey.

By September 11, 2022, we can determine that there are already two famous people who were born on September 11, 2001: Nicholas Robertson, a left wing for the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs; and actress Mackenzie Aladjem.