Today in History: Washington lays the foundation

1793 George Washington lays the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol.

1830 Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in the United States, loses a nine-mile race in Maryland to a horse.

1850 Congress passes the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted in 1793), requiring the return of escaped slaves to their owners.

1862 After waiting all day for a Union attack which never came at Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins a retreat out of Maryland and back to Virginia.

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1863 Union cavalry troops clash with a group of Confederates at Chickamauga Creek.

1874 The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society is formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West.

1911 Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin dies four days after being shot at the Kiev opera house by socialist lawyer Dimitri Bogroff.

1914 The Irish Home Rule Bill becomes law, but is delayed until after World War I.

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1929 Charles Lindbergh takes off on a 10,000 mile air tour of South America.

1934 The League of Nations admits the Soviet Union.

1939 A German U-boat sinks the British aircraft carrier Courageous, killing 500 people.

1948 Margaret Chase Smith becomes the first woman elected to the Senate without completing another senator’s term when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten. Smith is also the only woman to be elected to and serve in both houses of Congress.

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1960 Two thousand cheer Fidel Castro’s arrival in New York for the United Nations session.

1961 UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold is killed in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Congo.

1964 U.S. destroyers fire on hostile targets in Vietnam.

For more about Sept. 17 through history:

www.historynet.com/today-in-history/september-18