History Highlights

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 29, the 272nd day of 2021. There are 93 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Sept. 29, 1789, the U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

On this date:

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

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 1962, Canada joined the space age as it launched the Alouette 1 satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The musical “My Fair Lady” closed on Broadway after 2,717 performances.

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 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 1986, the Soviet Union released Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist confined on spying charges.

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.