History Highlights
Today is Wednesday, Sept. 30, the 274th day of 2020. There are 92 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Sept. 30, 1938, after co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said, “I believe it is peace for our time.”
On this date:
In 1777, the Continental Congress — forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces — moved to York, Pennsylvania.
In 1791, Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.
In 1912, the Columbia Journalism School in New York held its first classes. In 1939, the first college football game to be televised was shown on experimental station W2XBS in New York as Fordham University defeated Waynesburg College, 34-7. In 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end.
In 1955, actor James Dean, 24, was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, California.
In 1962, James Meredith, a Black student, was escorted by federal marshals to the campus of the University of Mississippi, where he enrolled for classes the next day; Meredith’s presence sparked rioting that claimed two lives.
In 1972, Roberto Clemente hit a double against Jon Matlack of the New York Mets during Pittsburgh’s 5-0 victory at Three Rivers Stadium; the hit was the 3,000th and last for the Pirates star.
In 1984, the mystery series “Murder, She Wrote,” starring Angela Lansbury, premiered on CBS.
In 2001, under threat of U.S. military strikes, Afghanistan’s hard-line Taliban rulers said explicitly for the first time that Osama bin Laden was still in the country and that they knew where his hideout was located.
In 2014, the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S. was confirmed in a patient who had recently traveled from Liberia to Dallas. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation’s first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores.
In 2018, U.S. and Canadian officials announced an agreement for Canada to take part in a revamped North American free trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico; the new agreement would be called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, and would take effect on July 1, 2020.
Ten years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Guatema-leaders to apologize for 1940s U.S.-led experiments that infected occupants of a Guatemala mental hospital with syphilis, apparently to test the effectiveness of penicillin against some sexually transmitted diseases. The government of Ecuador declared a state of siege after rebellious police angered by a law that cut their benefits plunged the small South American nation into chaos.
Five years ago: Just hours before a midnight deadline, a bitterly divided Congress approved, and President Barack Obama signed, a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government open. Kelly Renee Gissendaner, the only woman on Georgia’s death row, was executed by injection, making her the first woman put to death by the state in seven decades. Prosecutors declined to charge Caitlyn Jenner in a California car crash the previous February that killed another driver, Kim Howe, citing insufficient evidence.
One year ago: House Democrats subpoenaed President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for documents related to his interactions with Ukrainian officials. The Justice Department said President Donald Trump had recently asked Australia’s prime minister and other foreign leaders to help Attorney General William Barr investigate the origins of the Russia probe. International opera star Jessye Norman died in New York at 74.
Oakland Raiders linebacker Vontaze Burfict was suspended for the rest of the season for a helmet-to-helmet hit on Indianapolis Colts tight end Jack Doyle; it was the league’s most severe punishment ever for an on-field infraction. Defying the NCAA, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law allowing college athletes at public and private schools in California to hire agents and make money from endorsement deals.