FILE - In this Sept. 30, 1985 file photo, Christa McAuliffe, the space teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, helmeted and ready for the oxygen mask as she prepared for an orientation flight aboard one of the T-28 NASA training planes in Houston, Texas. A whole generation _ including McAuliffe's own students _ has grown up since McAuliffe and six other astronauts perished on live TV on Jan. 28, 1986, a quarter century ago on Friday, Jan. 28, 2011. Now the former schoolchildren who loved her are making sure that people who weren't even born then know about McAuliffe and her dream of going into space. (AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky, File)

Today is Sunday, Sept. 27, the 271st day of 2020. There are 95 days left in the year.

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Today’s Highlight in History

On September 27, 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.

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The space shuttle Discovery rises from the swamps surrounding its pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla, Thursday morning, Sept. 29, 1988. (AP Photo)

On this date

In 1779, John Adams was named by Congress to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.

In 1825, the first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England.

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.

Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 28, 1983. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)

In 1956, Olympic track and field gold medalist and Hall of Fame golfer Babe Didrikson Zaharias died in Galveston, Texas, at age 45.

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 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.

Actress Elizabeth Taylor, the co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) makes a speech at the beginning of gala dinner on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 1994 at a Tokyo Hotel. The charity dinner was held as a part of the Art against AIDS Japan 1994, a series of events to raise funds to prevent infection of AIDS promoted by the AmFAR. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

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 2004, NBC announced that “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno would be succeeded by “Late Night” host Conan O’Brien in 2009 (however, O’Brien’s stint on “The Tonight Show” lasted just over seven months).

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.)

Ten years ago: Southwest Airlines announced the $1.4 billion purchase of AirTran. Temperatures reached 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles, the highest in records kept since 1877.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama committed the U.S. to a new blueprint to eliminate poverty and hunger around the world as he addressed a global summit at the United Nations. Pope Francis urged hundreds of thousands of faithful gathered in Philadelphia for the biggest event of his U.S. visit to be open to the “miracles of love,” closing out a six-day trip with a message of hope for families and consolation for victims of child sexual abuse.

One year ago: House Democrats took their first concrete steps in the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, issuing subpoenas demanding documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduling depositions for other State Department officials. A federal judge blocked new Trump administration rules that would allow the government to keep immigrant children in detention facilities with their parents indefinitely.

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SEPTEMBER 28

On Sept. 28, 1928, Scottish medical researcher Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first effective antibiotic.

In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England to claim the English throne.

In 1781, American forces in the Revolutionary War, backed by a French fleet, began their successful siege of Yorktown, Va.

In 1787, the Congress of the Confederation voted to send the just-completed Constitution of the United States to state legislatures for their approval.

In 1850, flogging was abolished as a form of punishment in the U.S. Navy.

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SEPTEMBER 29

On Sept. 29, 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the nation’s 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation.

On Sept. 29, 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the nation’s 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation.

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.

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SEPTEMBER 30

On Sept. 30, 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.”

In 1777, the Continental Congress – forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces — moved to York, Pennsylvania.

In 1912, the Columbia Journalism School in New York held its first classes.

In 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end.

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OCTOBER 1

On Oct. 1, 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; the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, killed himself before officers arrived.

In 1908, Henry Ford introduced his Model T automobile to the market.

In 1957, the motto “In God We Trust” began appearing on U.S. paper currency.

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OCTOBER 2

On Oct. 2, 1944, German troops crushed the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which a quarter of a million people had been killed.

In 1869, political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India.

In 1890, comedian Groucho Marx was born Julius Marx in New York.

In 1941, during World War II, German armies launched an all-out drive against Moscow; Soviet forces succeeded in holding onto their capital.

In 1950, the comic strip “Peanuts,” created by Charles M. Schulz, was syndicated to seven newspapers.

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court opened its new term.

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OCTOBER 3

On Oct. 3, 1995, the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil trial).

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.

In 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.”

In 1961, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” also starring Mary Tyler Moore, made its debut on CBS.

In 1967, folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, the Dust Bowl Troubadour best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” died in New York of complications from Huntington’s disease.

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