Sept. 26
1777: British troops occupied Philadelphia during the American Revolution.
1960: The first-ever debate between presidential nominees occurred as Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon faced off before a national TV audience.
Sept. 27
1903: A Southern Railway mail train derailed near Danville, Virginia, killing 11; the accident inspired the famous ballad, “Wreck of the Old 97.”
1940: Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, formally allying the World War II Axis powers.
1964: The government publicly released the Warren Commission report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy.
Sept. 28
1924: Three U.S. Army planes landed in Seattle, completing the first round-the-world air trip in 175 days.
1928: Scottish medical researcher Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.
2020: The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic reached 1 million.
Sept. 29
1789: The U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.
1829: London’s reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty.
1965: The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts were created.
1978: Pope John Paul I was found dead in his Vatican apartment just over a month after becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Sept. 30
1791: Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.
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.”
1947: The World Series was broadcast on television for the first time.
1949: The Berlin Airlift came to an end.
1955: Actor James Dean, 24, was killed in a two-car collision.
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.
Oct. 1
1908: Henry Ford introduced his Model T automobile to the market.
1949: Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China during a ceremony in Beijing. Under his totalitarian regime, 40 to 80 million died due to starvation, persecution, prison labor and mass executions.
1957: The motto “In God We Trust” began appearing on U.S. paper currency.
1971: Walt Disney World opened near Orlando, Florida.
2017: A gunman opened fire from a room at the Mandalay Bay casino hotel in Las Vegas on a crowd of 22,000 country music fans at a concert below, leaving 58 people dead and more than 800 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Oct. 2
1869: Political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India.
1941: During World War II, German armies launched an all-out drive against Moscow; Soviet forces succeeded in holding on to their capital.
1959: Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” debuted on CBS with the episode “Where Is Everybody?” starring Earl Holliman.
2017: Tom Petty died at a Los Angeles hospital at age 66.