Today in History September 29

Reuters

1923 - Britain began to govern Palestine under a mandate from the League of Nations.

1938 - Germany, France, Britain and Italy signed the Munich agreement, in which the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, was surrendered to Nazi Germany.

1941 - Over two days, German occupiers killed 33,771 Jewish men, women and children in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev.

1957 - Many people were killed in the first nuclear waste disaster to cause large loss of life. An explosion at the Mayak Chemical Combine near Lake Kystym in Russia formed a nuclear cloud five miles (eight km) wide.

1988 - The NASA shuttle Discovery was launched in the first shuttle mission since the explosion of Challenger in 1986.

2001 - Nguyen Van Thieu, the penultimate president of South Vietnam, who led his nation until just days before it fell to North Vietnam, died aged 78.

2002 - Afghan athletes returned to top international competition for the first time in eight years as the 14th Asian Games opened in Pusan, South Korea.

2004 - Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei signed a new constitution that paved the way for the oil-rich kingdom's first election since 1962.

2006 - A Boeing 737-800 belonging to low-cost Brazilian airline Gol crashed over the Amazon jungle in remote Mato Grosso state killing all 155 aboard.

2007 - Cooks prepare the world's biggest green salad in Spain.

2009 - Huge sub-sea quake hits American Samoa.