Today in History: September 17, aircraft crash kills a person for the first time
Today is Wednesday, Sept. 17, the 260th day of 2025. There are 105 days left in the year. Today in history: On Sept. 17, 1908, Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge of the U.S. Army Signal Corps became the first person to die in the crash of a powered aircraft, the Wright Flyer, at Fort Myer, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The pilot, Orville Wright, was seriously injured but survived. Also on this date: In 1787, the Constitution of the United States was completed and signed by a majority of delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Related Articles North Dakota newspaper columnist whose Olive Garden review went viral dies at 99 Judge won’t release identities of two women once described as potential co-conspirators of Epstein Amid bankruptcy, some Publishers Clearing House winners are facing the end of ‘forever’ prizes Retired 4-star Navy admiral sentenced to 6 years in prison for bribery plot Fonda, DiCaprio, Streisand and more mourn the death of Robert Redford In 1862, more than 3,600 men were killed in the Civil War Battle of Antietam (an-TEE’-tum) in Maryland. In 1944, during World War II, Allied paratroopers launched Operation Market Garden, landing behind German lines in the Netherlands. In 1978, after 12 days of meetings at the U.S. presidential retreat of Camp David, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (men-AH’-kem BAY’-gihn) signed the Camp David Accords, a framework for a peace treaty. In 1980, former Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza was assassinated in Paraguay. In 2001, six days after 9/11, stock prices nosedived but stopped short of collapse in an emotional, flag-waving reopening of Wall Street. In 2011, a demonstration calling itself Occupy Wall Street began in New York, prompting similar protests around the U.S. and the world. In 2021, a Los Angeles jury convicted New York real estate heir Robert Durst of killing his best friend 20 years earlier. (Durst, who was sentenced to life in prison, died in 2022.) Today’s Birthdays: Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is 92. Mountaineer-explorer Reinhold Messner is 81. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson is 80. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is 75. Actor Cassandra Peterson (“Elvira, Mistress of the Dark”) is 74. Director-actor Paul Feig is 63. Film director Baz Luhrmann is 63. Singer BeBe Winans is 63. Actor Kyle Chandler is 60. Rapper Doug E. Fresh is 59. Author Cheryl Strayed is 57. Actor Matthew Settle is 56. Designer-TV personality Nate Berkus is 54. NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson is 50. NHL forward Alexander Ovechkin (oh-VECH’-kin) is 40. Actor Danielle Brooks is 36. NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes is 30.
