TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, SEPT. 29, the 273rd day of 2016. There are 93 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1789, the U.S. War Department established a regular army with the strength of several hundred men.
In 1829, London’s reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty. In 1907, the foundation stone was laid for the Washington National Cathedral.
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 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, creating the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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. (The case remains unsolved.)
In 1990, the Washington National Cathedral, begun in 1907, was formally completed with President George H.W. Bush overseeing the laying of the final stone atop the southwest pinnacle of the cathedral’s St. Paul Tower.
In 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the nation’s 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Conductor Richard Bonynge is 86. Writer-director Robert Benton is 84. Singer Jerry Lee Lewis is 81. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., actor Ian McShane and jazz musician Jean-Luc Ponty are 74. Nobel Peace laureate Lech Walesa is 73. Television-film composer Mike Post is 72. Country singer Alvin Crow is 66. Actor Drake Hogestyn is 63. Broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill is 61. Actress Jill Whelan is 50. Actor Luke Goss and rock musician Brad Smith (Blind Melon) are 48. Actress Rachel Cronin is 45. Country musician Danick Dupelle (Emerson Drive) is 43. Country singer Katie McNeill (3 of Hearts) is 34. Rock musician Josh Farro is 29. Actor Doug Brochu and singer Phillip Phillips are 26. Actress Clara Mamet is 22.