Week of anniversaries highlights public safety, diplomacy and culture

The week from Sept. 29 to Oct. 4 marks anniversaries of several events that reshaped public safety, international relations, civil rights and modern culture, from the unresolved 1982 Tylenol poisonings in the Chicago area to Germany's reunification in 1990 and wartime maritime disaster in 1942.

On Sept. 29, 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide killed the first of seven people in the Chicago area. The case prompted new federal and industry standards for tamper-resistant packaging and led to legislation aimed at deterring product contamination, though the underlying criminal investigation remains unsolved. The attacks triggered nationwide changes in how over-the-counter medications are packaged and sold.

Sept. 30 recalls the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Britain, France, Germany and Italy negotiated the transfer of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany. Addressing the British public after the accord, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said, "I believe it is peace for our time." Historians view the deal as a failed attempt to avoid wider conflict, one that was followed soon after by further German expansion and the outbreak of World War II.