Today is Monday, Sept. 27, the 270th day of 2021.
There are 95 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Sept. 27, 1996, in Afghanistan, the Taliban, a band of former seminary students, drove the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul, captured the capital and executed former leader Najibullah.
On this date:
In 1779, John Adams was named by Congress to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.
In 1854, the first great disaster involving an Atlantic Ocean passenger vessel occurred when the steamship SS Arctic sank off Newfoundland; of the more than 400 people on board, only 86 survived.
In 1917, French sculptor and painter Edgar Degas died in Paris at age 83.
In 1939, Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.
In 1941, the United States launched the first 14 rapidly built “Liberty” military cargo vessels.
In 1964, the government publicly released the report of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy.
In 1979, Congress gave its final approval to forming the U.S. Department of Education.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced in a nationally broadcast address that he was eliminating all U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons, and called on the Soviet Union to match the gesture. The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked, 7-7, on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1994, more than 350 Republican congressional candidates gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to sign the “Contract with America,” a 10-point platform they pledged to enact if voters sent a GOP majority to the House.
In 1999, Sen. John McCain of Arizona officially opened his campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, the same day former Vice President Dan Quayle dropped his White House bid.
In 2016, scientists announced the first baby born from a controversial new technique that combined DNA from three people — the mother, the father and an egg donor. (The goal was to prevent the child from inheriting a fatal genetic disease from his mother.)
In 2018, during a day-long hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christine Blasey Ford said she was “100 percent” certain that she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers, and Kavanaugh then told senators that he was “100 percent certain” he had done no such thing; Republicans quickly scheduled a recommendation vote for the following morning.
