On This Day: WWI's First Battle of the Marne begins

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1522, one of Ferdinand Magellan's five ships -- the Vittoria -- arrived at Sanlucar de Barrameda in Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the world.

In 1620, 149 Pilgrims set sail from England aboard the Mayflower, bound for the New World.

In 1901, U.S. President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. McKinley died eight days later.

In 1909, word was received that U.S. Navy Adm. Robert Peary had reached the North Pole five months earlier, on April 6, 1909.

In 1914, World War I's first Battle of the Marne took place outside Paris, France. The allied forces of France and Britain defeated Germany, resulting in the deaths of some 150,000 people.

In 1966, South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, an architect of his nation's apartheid policies, was stabbed to death by a deranged messenger during a parliamentary meeting in Cape Town.

In 1995, the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee unanimously recommended that Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., be expelled from the Senate on charges of sexual misconduct and influence-peddling. He resigned two days later.

In 1995, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., played his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking the record set in 1939 by Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees. Ripken voluntarily ended his streak at 2,362 games in 1998.

The numbers on the Camden warehouse wall, pictured September 6, 2007, are the same ones used when Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played on September 5, 1995. File Photo by Mark Goldman/UPI

In 1997, Britain bid an emotional farewell to Princess Diana -- killed in a car accident a week earlier -- in a funeral at London's Westminster Abbey that was broadcast worldwide.

In 2004, former U.S. President Bill Clinton underwent a 4-hour quadruple heart bypass operation at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

In 2007, Luciano Pavarotti, one of opera's foremost tenors, died of cancer at his home in Modena, Italy. He was 71.

File Photo by Ezio Petersen/UPI

In 2008, Asif Ali Zardari, husband of slain politician Benazir Bhutto, was elected president of Pakistan by a wide margin. Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who had returned from self-imposed exile a short time earlier, was assassinated two weeks before the 2007 presidential election in which she was a leading candidate.

In 2010, officials said they feared as many as 270 people died in two weekend riverboat accidents in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2012, a jury in Joliet, Ill., found Drew Peterson, a former police sergeant, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison.

Former Bollingbrook, Ill., police sergeant Drew Peterson leaves Will County circuit court after his arraignment on May 18, 2009, in Joliet, Ill. A jury found him guilty of murdering his third wife September 6, 2012. File Photo by David Banks/UPI