Route taken by the burglars into the vault

The Baker Street robbery was the burglary of safe deposit boxes at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank in London, England, on the night of 11 September 1971. A gang tunnelled 40 feet (12 m) from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault (diagram shown). The property stolen was probably worth between £1.25 and £3 million; only £231,000 was recovered by the police. The burglary was planned by Anthony Gavin, a career criminal, who was inspired by "The Red-Headed League", a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle in which Sherlock Holmes waits in a bank vault to arrest a gang who have tunnelled in through the floor. Gavin and his colleagues rented a leather goods shop, and tunnelled during weekends. Police found members of the gang soon after the break-in; one of the burglars had signed the lease in his own name, and informers led investigators to Gavin. Many of the papers relating to the burglary remain under embargo at The National Archives until January 2071. (Full article...)

South fork of Chollas Creek

• ... that a California sea lion, later named Freeway, was thought to have traveled up Chollas Creek (pictured) before getting onto California State Highway 94?
• ... that Akbelen Forest is being cut down to make way for a coal mine?
• ... that Gage and Tollner used to close from June to September because of oyster shortages?
• ... that small Poecilia gillii males have longer sex organs than larger males, to facilitate mating with females that flee from them?
• ... that kids could fight the Great Chicago Fire at Freedomland U.S.A.?
• ... that despite being the first women's football team in Northern Ireland to sign players on professional contracts, Cliftonville Ladies F.C. were not the first club to register them?
• ... that Art Rooney Jr. presided over what one Pro Football Hall of Fame selector described as "the best drafting run in NFL history"?
• ... that Leskov Island is probably inaccessible for penguins?

Earthquake damage in Tizi N'Test

• An earthquake
  (damage pictured) strikes Morocco, killing more than 2,800 people.
• Tharman Shanmugaratnam is elected as the next president of Singapore.
• In Johan­nes­burg, South Africa, a residential fire kills 77 people.
• In Gabon, President Ali Bongo is deposed by a military coup shortly after his re-election.

September 11: National Day of Catalonia

United Airlines Flight 175 strikes the World Trade Center's South Tower

• 1297 – First War of Scottish Independence: Scottish forces under Andrew Moray and William Wallace defeated English troops at the Battle of Stirling Bridge on the River Forth.
• 1945 – The Japanese-run camp at Batu Lintang, Sarawak, in Borneo was liberated by the Australian 9th Division, averting the planned massacre of its 2,000-plus Allied POWs and civilian internees by four days.
• 1978 – British medical photographer Janet Parker became the last recorded person to die from smallpox, leading to a debate on whether the virus should be preserved.
• 1995 – Mir EO-19, the nineteenth crewed mission to the Russian space station Mir, returned to Earth after approximately 75 days in space. It was the first Mir expedition launched on an American Space Shuttle.
• 2001 – Al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger airliners to carry out a series of terrorist attacks (second attack pictured) against targets in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area.