TODAY IN HISTORY

On Sept. 29, 1982, ExtraStrength Tylenol capsules laced with deadly cyanide claimed the first of seven victims in the Chicago area. (To date, the case remains unsolved.)

On this date:

In 1789, the U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

In 1829, London's reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty.

In 1902, William Topaz McGonagall, affectionately considered Britain's possibly worst-ever poet, died in Edinburgh, Scotland.

In 1910, the National Urban League had its beginnings in New York as The Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.

In 1938, British, French, German and Italian leaders concluded the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

In 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice aboard the British ship HMS Nelson off Malta.

In 1957, the San Francisco-bound New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds, losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-1. The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game before moving to Los Angeles, losing to the Phillies 2-1 in Philadelphia.

In 1967, author Carson McCullers died in Nyack, New York, at age 50.

In 1977, the Billy Joel album "The Stranger" was released by Columbia Records.

In 1978, Pope John Paul I was found dead in his Vatican apartment just over a month after becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1987, Henry Ford II, longtime chairman of Ford Motor Co., died in Detroit at age 70.

In 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the nation's 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation.

Ten years ago: President George W. Bush signed a bill to prevent a government shutdown, but lambasted Democrats controlling Congress for sending him the stopgap measure while they continued to work on more than a dozen spending bills funding the day-to-day operations of 15 Cabinet departments.

Five years ago: Omar Khadr, the last Western detainee held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned to Canada after a decade in custody. Former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger died at the age of 86.