Today in history, September 12: Turkish military seizes power over the country and keeps it until 1983.

Highlights in history on this date.

1609: English explorer Henry Hudson sails into the New York river that now bears his name.
1711: A French squadron attacks Rio de Janeiro as part of the War of Spanish Succession.
1772: Russia takes Baku and Derbent on Caspian Sea from Persia.
1801: Alexander I of Russia announces annexation of Georgia.
1803: John Bowen arrives in the future Tasmania with two convict ships to set up a new British colony.
1848: Switzerland adopts new constitution as a federal union with strong central government.
1890: British South Africa Company sets up Salisbury in Rhodesia.
1910: The world’s first recorded female police officer, Alice Stebbins Wells, is appointed to the Los Angeles Police Department.
1943: German paratroopers take Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he is being held by the Italian government.

1944: First US troops reach German soil in World War II.
1953: Nikita Khrushchev becomes First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
1959: Soviet Union launches Luna 2, the first spacecraft to strike the moon.
1964: Dissident army officers try unsuccessfully to overthrow government of South Vietnam.
1968: Albania announces it is withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.
1970: Palestinian guerillas blow up three hijacked airliners in Jordan.
1976: Chinese leaders gather in Beijing for funeral of Mao Tse-Tung.
1980: Turkish military seizes power over the country and keeps it until 1983.
1998: Azem Hajdari, a leading Albanian opposition politician, is assassinated by unidentified gunmen.
2001: Stunned rescue workers continue to search for bodies in the rubble of the World Trade Centre a day after a terrorist attack shut down the financial capital, badly damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead.

2002: Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello takes over as the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, succeeding Mary Robinson.
2003: The UN Security Council votes to lift sanctions against Libya that had been in place for 11 years as a response to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland;
Country singer Johnny Cash dies aged 71.
2005: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe quietly adopts constitutional changes that make it easier for the state to seize private property and prevent opponents from travelling abroad to criticise his 25-year rule.
2006: Solomon Islands government expels Australia’s high commissioner Patrick Cole in retaliation for Canberra’s opposition to an inquiry into riots in the Pacific nation.
2007: Authorities confirm a new foot-and-mouth outbreak on the outskirts of London, just days after the government lifted livestock restrictions.
2011: A leaking gasoline pipeline explodes in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, sending flames racing through a slum and killing at least 75 people.
2012: A mob armed with guns and grenades launches a fiery attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the US ambassador and three other Americans.

2013: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad publicly agrees to a Russian plan to secure and destroy his chemical weapons, but says the proposal will work only if the US halts threats of military action.
2014: Olympian Oscar Pistorius is found guilty of culpable homicide, one day after his shock murder acquittal over the death of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
2015: Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announces on Facebook that a NSW bid to move the Australian Grand Prix to Sydney has failed.
2016: The NSW government offers a record $1 million reward for information relating to missing toddler William Tyrell who disappeared two years ago from the NSW coast.
2017: The UN joins the growing international condemnation of Myanmar’s violence against Rohingya Muslims.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap” — Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821).