Today in History
Today is Saturday, Sept. 29, the 272nd day of 2018. There are 93 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On Sept. 29, 1978, Pope John Paul I was found dead in his Vatican apartment just over a month after becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.
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 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 1977, the Billy Joel album
"The Stranger" was released by Columbia Records.
In 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with deadly cyanide claimed the first of seven victims in the Chicago area. (To date, the case remains unsolved.)
In 1987, Henry Ford II, longtime chairman of Ford Motor Co., died in Detroit at age 70.
In 2000, Israeli riot police stormed a major Jerusalem shrine and opened fire on stone-throwing Muslim worshippers, killing four Palestinians and wounding 175.
In 2001, President George W. Bush condemned Afghanistan's Taliban rulers for harboring Osama bin Laden and his followers as the United States pressed its military and diplomatic campaign against terror.
In 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the nation's 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation.
Ten years ago: On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 777 points after the House defeated, 228-205, a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, leaving both parties and the Bush administration scrambling to pick up the pieces.
Five years ago: NASA's newest delivery service, Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned cargo spacecraft Cygnus, made its first-ever shipment to the International Space Station. Some four dozen people were shot to death at an agricultural college in Gujba, Nigeria, in an attack blamed on Boko Haram. A car bomb tore through a market in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing at least 41 people. On the last day of the season, Miami's Henderson Alvarez pitched one of baseball's most bizarre no-hitters. Alvarez celebrated in the on-deck circle when the Marlins scored on a twoout wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Detroit Tigers 1-0.
One year ago: Tom Price resigned as President Donald Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services amid investigations into his use of costly charter flights for official travel at taxpayer expense. The United States warned Americans to stay away from Cuba, and ordered home more than half of the American diplomatic corps there; the administration began referring to the mysterious health ailments affecting Americans there as "attacks" rather than "incidents" but acknowledged that neither Cuban nor US investigators could figure out who or what was responsible. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz accused the Trump administration of "killing us with the inefficiency" after Hurricane Maria.
Thought for Today: "Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies." — W.L. George, English writer (1882-1926).