Sept. 21 historic events
1780 American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792 The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy.
1938 a hurricane struck parts of New York and New England, causing widespread damage and claiming more than 600 lives. (If such a hurricane would strike nowadays, lower Manhattan would be have devastating floods, including building basements and subway tunnels.)
1942 On Yom Kippur, Nazis sent over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp.
1942 In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews.
1942 The Boeing B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight. (The long-range B-29 devastated Tokyo and other Japanese cities later in the war, burning large sections of the mostly wood-building-constructed cities to the ground in fire-bomb raids. The fires were so massive and hot that they caused powerful winds. The only two nuclear bombs to be used in war were dropped by B-29s.)
1964 The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s first Mach 3 bomber, made its maiden flight from Palmdale, California. (This plane never went into full production . One of the two prototype planes crashed during a publicity-photo flight, killing a crew member as well as the pilot of the fighter it collided with.)
1977 President Jimmy Carter’s budget director, Bert Lance, resigned amid controversy over past business and banking practices.
1999 A powerful earthquake struck Taiwan, killing at least 2,400 people.
2001 Congress approved $15 billion to help an airline industry reeling from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
2002 Angelo Buono Jr., the Hillside Strangler whose murder spree terrorized Los Angeles in the 1970s, died in prison at age 67.
2003 NASA’s Galileo spacecraft plunged into Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes, bringing a fiery conclusion to a 14-year exploration of the solar system’s largest planet and its moons.
2008 Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two last remaining independent investment banks on Wall Street, become bank holding companies as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.