Today is September 9

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On this day in 1976, Mao Zedong, a self-taught peasant who founded the People's Republic of China, died in Beijing at the age of 82.

Mao Zedong ruled China with a zero-tolerance attitude from 1949 to his death. He denounced the capitalist West and focused on creating a truly communal society in China. But Mao believed that revolution was an ongoing process, in which battle was waged continually against class enemies, against remains of the old culture, and against bureaucratic habits. His China was subjected to a series of destructive economic and political upheavals. The last of these was the Cultural Revolution, which essentially destroyed the old Communist party establishment. Within a month of Mao's death, political moderates arrested his wife Jiang Qing and her Gang of Four, who had launched the Cultural Revolution. Then, cautiously, leader Deng Xiaoping opened China to the rest of the world. In 1982 the constitution boldly stated that progress was more important than class struggle.

Also on This Day:
1971: The inmates of New York State's maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility, near Buffalo, seized control of the prison, fatally injuring one guard and taking 38 hostages; after a four-day siege, state authorities recovered control by storming the prison, but 43 people died.

1965: Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched the eighth perfect game in major league baseball history, beating the Chicago Cubs 1-0.

1948: A Communist-controlled government in North Korea proclaimed the independence of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea under Premier Kim Il Sung.

1850: The first of the five laws known collectively as the Compromise of 1850, aimed at ending sectional disputes that threatened the Union, was enacted by the U.S. Congress; it admitted California to the Union as a free state.

1499: The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon at the end of the historic expedition that opened the sea route to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope.

1087: William I, who led the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, died; he had introduced Norman institutions and feudalism to that country, providing stability and firm government in a time of great disorder.
Born on This Day:
1585: Cardinal Richelieu, who ruled France as the principal minister of King Louis XIII from 1624 to 1642; he laid the basis of royal absolutism in France and of French preeminence in Europe.

1823: Naturalist Joseph Leidy, who pioneered the study of North American fossils.

1828: Leo Tolstoi (or Tolstoy), one of Russia's greatest novelists and most influential moral philosophers, the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace.

1877: First baseman Frank Chance, who teamed with shortstop Joe Tinker and second baseman Johnny Evers to form the legendary \"Tinker to Evers to Chance\" double-play combination for the Chicago Cubs at the turn of the 20th century.

1887: Alf Landon, a key figure in the U.S. Republican party in the 1930s who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1936; although he won 17,000,000 votes, he carried only two states, Maine and Vermont.

1941: Singer and songwriter Otis Redding, considered one of the greatest exponents of soul music.