Today in History: September 17, U.S. Constitution signed

Today is Thursday, Sept. 17, the 260th day of 2026. There are 105 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was completed and signed by a majority of delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Also on this date:

In 1862, more than 3,600 men were killed in the Civil War Battle of Antietam (an-TEE’-tum) in Maryland.

In 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.

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.)

In 2024, thousands of pagers distributed to the Shiite Muslim political party and the militant group Hezbollah blew up in homes, offices and front lines across Lebanon, remotely detonated by Israel. The pager attack killed 12 people and wounded more than 3,000 others.

Today’s Birthdays: Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is 93. Mountaineer-explorer Reinhold Messner is 82. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson is 81. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is 76. Actor Cassandra Peterson (“Elvira, Mistress of the Dark”) is 75. Director-actor Paul Feig is 64. Film director Baz Luhrmann is 64. Singer BeBe Winans is 64. Actor Kyle Chandler is 61. Rapper Doug E. Fresh is 60. Author Cheryl Strayed is 58. Actor Matthew Settle is 57. Designer-TV personality Nate Berkus is 55. NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson is 51. NHL forward Alexander Ovechkin (oh-VECH’-kin) is 41. Actor Danielle Brooks is 37. NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes is 31. Actor Mia Talerico is 18.