On This Day: Sunday September 10, 2006

This is the 253rd day of the year, with 112 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: loans

A loan is money lent on condition that it is repaid, either in installments or all at once, on agreed dates and usually with the understanding that the borrower pays the lender an agreed rate of interest. The oldest type of secured loan we know of is the pawn or pledge: the borrower delivers the goods to be charged to the lender, who keeps them until repayment of the secured loan. This is rather outmoded today, but there are many other types of loans.

Holidays

Switzerland: Kaseteilet.
Bulgaria: Liberation Day.
China: Teachers' Day.

Events

1608 - Captain John Smith was elected council president of the Jamestown colony in Virginia.
1623 - Lumber and furs were the first cargo to leave Plymouth, Massachusetts, for England.
1813 - Oliver H. Perry and an American naval force defeated the British at the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812.
1846 - Elias Howe received a U.S. patent for the first sewing machine.
1913 - First paved coast-to-coast road, named the Lincoln Highway, opened in the U.S.
1919 - New boundaries were settled in the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which brought about the end of the Austrian Empire.
1939 - Canada and South Africa declared war on Germany, following the declarations of Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand on the previous day.
1939 - Canada declared war on Nazi Germany.
1955 - "Gunsmoke" premiered on TV.
1963 - Black students entered Alabama public schools following a standoff between federal authorities and Governor George C. Wallace.
1966 - The "Road Runner Show" premiered.
1974 - Guinea-Bissau declared its independence from Portugal.
1977 - Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant and a convicted murderer, became the last person in France executed with the guillotine.
1981 - Pablo Picasso's painting "Guernica" was returned to Spain and put in Madrid's Prado Museum. Picasso's will said that the painting was not to return to Spain until the Fascists lost power and democracy restored.
1993 - "X-Files" debuted.
2000 - Broadway's longest-running production, "Cats," closed after more than 7400 performances.

Births

1736 - Carter Braxton, American revolutionary statesman and signer of Declaration of Independence.
1839 - Isaac Kauffman Funk, American publisher.
1929 - Arnold Palmer, American, professional golfer.
1934 - Charles Kuralt, American journalist and broadcaster.
1934 - Roger Maris, American professional baseball player.
1941 - Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, biologist, and science writer.
1967 - tinhuviel, leader of The First Church of the Alpaca Lips. The Demented One. Beloved and revered by all of her peers ^.^

Deaths

1797 - Mary Wollstonecraft, English writer and advocate for women's equality.
1935 - Huey Long, American politician, governor of Louisiana and United States senator, assassinated.
1983 - John Vorster, South African prime minister of Cape Town (1966-1978).