TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Friday, September 21, the 264th day of 2018. There are 101 days left in the year.

1435 The Congress of Arras causes Burgundy to switch sides in the Hundred Years’ War. 1745 A Hanoverian Army is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart

1792 French Revolution: The National Convention abolishes the monarchy. 1860 Second Opium War: An Anglo- French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Palikao. 1898 Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days’ Reform in China.

1921 A storage silo in Oppau, Germany, explodes, killing 500600 people.

1937 J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is published. 1942 The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaitsi to Belzec extermination camp. 1942 The Boeing B- 29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight. 1949 The People’s Republic of China is proclaimed.

1964 Malta gains independence from the United Kingdom, but remains in the Commonwealth. 1965 The Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations. 1971 Bahrain, Bhutan and Qatar join the United Nations. 1972 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation ? 1081, placing the entire country under martial law, and marking the beginning of his authoritarian rule. 1976 Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D. C. He was formerly a member of the Chilean Marxist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet. 1976 Seychelles joins the United Nations. 1981 Belize is granted full independence from the United Kingdom. 1981 Sandra Day O’Connor is unanimously approved by the US Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice. 1991 Armenia gains independence from the Soviet Union. 1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends Parliament and scraps the then- functioning Constitution, thus triggering the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993. 2001 America: A Tribute to Heroes is broadcast by over 35 network and cable channels, raising over $ 200 million for the victims of the September 11 attacks. 2001 racial tensions in Peterborough, England following the September 11 attacks result in the murder of Ross Parker by a gang of ten Muslims in a racially motivated attack.

2003 The Galileo spacecraft is terminated by sending it into Jupiter’s atmosphere.