Today in History: September 17, aircraft crash kills a person for the first time

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Today in history:Also on this date:Today’s Birthdays:

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.

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.)