September 29 is Michaelmas, one of the four historic English quarter days that for centuries set when rents fell due and legal terms began. It's also the anniversary of a diplomatic surrender that failed to buy peace and a market crash that announced a financial crisis was real.
On this day
1938Germany, the UK, France and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, ceding Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in a bid to avert war — a settlement that bought less than a year of peace.Ministry of Information official photographer via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
2008The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points in a single session, its largest point drop to date, after the US Congress rejects a $700 billion bank bailout bill during the global financial crisis.Federal Reserve Bank via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain- 1959IndiaNineteen-year-old Arati Saha becomes the first Asian woman to swim the English Channel, crossing from France to England in 16 hours 20 minutes; she later becomes the first woman to receive the Padma Shri for sport.
Did you know
Michaelmas falls every September 29 without fail — English folklore holds the devil landed in a blackberry bush when he fell from heaven that day, which is why tradition says you shouldn't pick blackberries after it.