TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1789

The U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

ON THIS DATE 1829

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

1918

Allied forces began their decisive breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line during World War I.

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.

1943

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

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 2,717performances.

1978

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

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.)

1986

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

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.

2006

U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he’d sent to former House pages.

2011

Germany kept alive hopes that the 17-nation euro currency could survive the debt crisis as lawmakers in Europe’s largest economy voted overwhelmingly in favor of expanding the powers of the eurozone’s bailout fund.

2016

A New Jersey Transit commuter train slammed into the Hoboken station, killing one person and injuring more than 100others.

2020

The first debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden deteriorated into bitter taunts and near chaos, as Trump repeatedly interrupted his opponent with angry and personal jabs and the two men talked over each other. Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who had supported him, telling one such group known as Proud Boys to “stand back, stand by.”