On this day, Sept. 6 ...

1995: Baltimore Orioles great Cal Ripken Jr. breaks Lou Gehrig's "iron man" record by playing in his 2,131st straight game.

Also on this day:

  • 1901: President William McKinley is shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. McKinley would die eight days later, with Vice President Theodore Roosevelt sworn in to succeed him.
  • 1997: More than 2 billion people watch Princess Diana's funeral on TV.
  • 2004: Seven members of the First Marine Division from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and three U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers are killed by a car bomb near Fallujah.
  • 2006: George W. Bush acknowledges for the first time that the CIA was running secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation tactics forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.
  • 2007: Operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti dies at age 71. 
  • 2014: President Barack Obama, in an interview taped for NBC's "Meet the Press," says the surge of immigrant children entering the U.S. illegally has changed the politics surrounding the issue of immigration and led him to put off a pledge to use executive action that could shield millions of people from deportation.
  • 2017: Hurricane Irma pounds Puerto Rico with heavy rain and powerful winds; more than 900,000 people are left without power. 
  • 2017: A California parole panel recommends parole for Leslie Van Houten, who at 19 was the youngest of Charles Manson's murderous followers in 1969. (California Gov. Jerry Brown would block her release.)
  • 2018: Then-candidate for president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro is stabbed at a campaign rally. He would survive and go on to win the election. 

Zimbabwe's former president Robert Mugabe looks on during a press conference at his private residence nicknamed "Blue Roof" in Harare, Zimbabwe, July 29, 2018. (REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko)

  • 2019: Robert Mugabe, the controversial president of Zimbabwe who was forced to resign in 2017 after decades in power, dies at age 95.