of attempts at ethnic cleansing. September 16 – WWII: The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 is signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt, creating the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. September 17 – WWII: Hitler postpones Operation Sea Lion (Unternehmen Seelöwe), the planned German invasion of Britain, indefinitely. British planes from HMS Illustrious, backed by battleship HMS Valiant, attack the port of Benghazi in Libya. Four Italian ships are sunk in the harbour. September 17–18 – is torpedoed by in the Atlantic, with the loss of 248 of the 406 on board, including child evacuees bound for Canada. This results in cancellation of the British Children's Overseas Reception Board's plan to relocate children overseas. September 20–22 – Convoy HX 72, a North Atlantic convoy of 43 ships, is attacked by a German U-boat group (wolfpack), eleven ships of 73 tons are sunk, seven during the second night of the attack by the U-100 under the command of Joachim Schepke. September 21 – 1940 Australian federal election: Robert Menzies' UAP/Country Coalition Government is re-elected as a minority government, narrowly defeating the Labor Party led by John Curtin. It is the last federal election to result in a minority government until 2010. September 22 – Japan enters French Indochina: An agreement is signed in which Japan promises to station 6,000 troops there, and limit the total number of troops that could be in the colony at any given time to 25,000. Rights are also given for three airfields. September 23–25 – Battle of Dakar – Naval forces of Free France and Britain fail to take the port of Dakar in French West Africa from Vichy France. September 25 – Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany: German Reichskommissar Josef Terboven appoints a provisional council of state from the pro-Nazi Nasjonal Samling party, under Vidkun Quisling, as a puppet government for Norway. September 26 – A group of Japanese officers, in violation of an agreement, signed 4 days earlier with French Indochina, take Đồng Đăng and Lam Sơn, with 40 Franco-Vietnamese troops killed and around 1,000 deserting. The same day the United States imposes a total embargo on all scrap metal shipments to Japan. September 27 – WWII: Germany, Italy and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact. September 30 (night to October 1) – Arsonists from the Hitler Youth destroy the Great Synagogue of Strasbourg. October October 1 – The first section