Today in history for September 29: the mass murder at Babyn Yar, the decisive Battle of Auray, Pompey’s birth, CERN’s legal foundation, London’s first Metropolitan Police patrols and the Space Shuttle’s return to flight.
September 29, 1941 — The Babyn Yar massacre begins
Jewish residents of occupied Kyiv followed posted orders to assemble near the city’s cemetery, carrying papers, money, valuables and warm clothing. The instructions were designed to resemble a deportation. German SS and police units and their auxiliaries instead drove the crowds through guarded barriers toward the Babyn Yar ravine.
Over September 29 and 30, Sonderkommando 4a and supporting units murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children, according to the perpetrators’ own operational report. The massacre belonged to the wider campaign of mass shootings that followed Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Explosions caused by Soviet mines in central Kyiv supplied a pretext, but Nazi racial policy determined the victims.
Babyn Yar remained a killing site during the occupation. In 1943, prisoners were forced to burn bodies as German authorities tried to erase evidence. Soviet commemoration later obscured the specifically Jewish identity of the first mass victims. The record—orders, reports, photographs, testimony and graves—survived both murder and concealment.
September 29, 1364 — The Battle of Auray decides Brittany’s succession war
Two claimants had fought for the duchy of Brittany since 1341. John of Montfort’s cause drew English support; Charles of Blois was backed by France. Their Breton civil war became entangled with the Hundred Years’ War, turning ports, castles and dynastic law into matters of international strategy.
In 1364 Montfort’s forces besieged Auray. Charles advanced to relieve it with a Franco-Breton army that included Bertrand du Guesclin. John was supported by Sir John Chandos and Anglo-Breton troops. On September 29 Charles’s army attacked the prepared Montfortist position. The assault failed, Charles was killed and du Guesclin was captured.
The victory did not itself write the settlement, but it made one possible. The Treaty of Guérande recognized John as Duke John IV in 1365. Auray ended the succession war’s central military contest while leaving Brittany to negotiate the consequences of a ruler whose English alliances could complicate relations with France.
September 29, 106 BCE — Pompey the Great is born
Gnaeus Pompeius was born into a wealthy municipal family in Picenum. No ancient account preserves a reliable birth scene, but the date September 29, 106 BCE is conventional in the biographical tradition. His career would expose how far the Roman Republic had moved from annual magistracies toward extraordinary military commands.
Pompey rose during Sulla’s civil war, celebrated an early triumph and accepted the name Magnus, “the Great.” He received sweeping authority against Mediterranean piracy and later defeated Mithridates VI, reorganizing Rome’s eastern territories. His veterans, settlements and political needs helped produce the coalition with Julius Caesar and Marcus Crassus later called the First Triumvirate.
After Julia and Crassus died, the alliance collapsed. Pompey and Caesar became rivals, and Caesar defeated him at Pharsalus in 48 BCE. Pompey was murdered in Egypt on September 28—one day before his birthday. His life remains a history of the Republic’s expansion and the precedents that made personal command increasingly difficult to contain.
September 29, 1954 — CERN officially comes into being
Postwar European scientists and diplomats wanted a research laboratory larger than most countries could build alone. A provisional council formed under UNESCO’s influence in 1952. Twelve states signed the convention for a permanent organization in Paris in 1953, but signature and legal creation were separate steps.
On September 29, 1954, sufficient ratifications brought the CERN Convention into force. Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia became the founding members. The acronym of the provisional council survived.
The convention committed the organization to fundamental research, excluded work for military requirements and required results to be made generally available. Accelerators, discoveries and the World Wide Web came later. The foundation’s first achievement was institutional: recently warring states agreed to share expensive scientific infrastructure and publish what it learned.
September 29, 1829 — London’s Metropolitan Police begin patrols
London already had parish constables, night watchmen and specialist officers, but the system was fragmented across a rapidly growing metropolis. Parliament’s Metropolitan Police Act created a centrally supervised force under commissioners Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne.
On September 29 the first constables went on patrol. Blue uniforms and top hats helped distinguish them from soldiers. Numbered officers walked assigned beats under a hierarchy of sergeants, inspectors and superintendents. Prevention through regular presence was central to the new model.
The force was controversial from the start. Critics feared continental-style surveillance and mocked the “bobbies” and “peelers” in print. Working-class communities could experience patrol as regulation as much as protection. The Met became a durable international model, but the argument present at its birth—how coercive power earns and keeps public legitimacy—never disappeared.
September 29, 1988 — STS-26 returns the Space Shuttle to flight
Discovery lifted from Kennedy Space Center at 11:37 a.m. Eastern time, thirty-two months after Challenger and its seven crew members were lost. Investigation had identified both failed solid-rocket-booster seals and organizational failures in the decisions that allowed the January 1986 launch.
NASA redesigned the booster field joint, changed safety and review structures, and trained an all-veteran crew: Frederick Hauck, Richard Covey, John Lounge, David Hilmers and George Nelson. The countdown paused for pressure-suit cooling-system fuses and upper-atmosphere winds before launch continued.
STS-26 deployed Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-3 and completed four days in orbit before landing at Edwards Air Force Base. One successful flight could not prove the shuttle risk-free. It did provide evidence that specific redesigns functioned and that NASA could resume operations under revised procedures. Return to flight was not an ending to Challenger’s history but a test of whether lessons had become hardware and practice.
The editorial thread: institutions under pressure
September 29 repeatedly asks what institutions do when ordinary rules fail or are deliberately destroyed. At Babyn Yar, bureaucracy became an instrument of genocide. At Auray and in Pompey’s Rome, armed power decided contests political systems could not contain. The Metropolitan Police and CERN were consciously designed institutions, one to govern urban order and one to share scientific capacity. STS-26 tested whether an institution could translate catastrophe into technical and managerial reform.
The outcomes are not morally equivalent. Their connection lies in structure: authority becomes visible through orders, commands, treaties, uniforms, procedures and machines. Reading them together keeps history from becoming a collection of isolated anniversaries.
Notable births on September 29
- Pompey the Great (106 BCE) — Roman commander and statesman whose extraordinary commands reshaped the late Republic.
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547) — Spanish novelist, playwright and poet, traditionally celebrated on this date.
- Caravaggio (1571) — Italian painter whose dramatic naturalism transformed European art.
- Horatio Nelson (1758) — British naval commander associated with the victories of the Napoleonic Wars.
- Enrico Fermi (1901) — Italian-American physicist central to nuclear and particle physics.
Notable deaths on September 29
- Émile Zola (1902) — French novelist and public intellectual associated with the Dreyfus affair.
- W. H. Auden (1973) — Anglo-American poet and essayist.
- Edward Everett Horton (1970) — American actor known for film comedy and narration.
- Tony Curtis (2010) — American film actor whose career included Some Like It Hot.
- Mac Davis (2020) — American singer-songwriter and actor.
Previous edition: September 28 in history.
