TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 17
1399 Tamerlane’s Mongols destroy the army of Mahmud Tughluk, Sultan of Delhi, at Panipat.
1526 Pope Clemens VII publishes degree Cum ad zero – forms Inquisition
1777 France recognized American independence.
1790 Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone
1861 The Stonewall Brigade begins to dismantle Dam No. 5 of the C&O Canal.
1886 At a Christmas party, Sam Belle shoots his old enemy Frank West, but is fatally wounded himself.
1903 Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft.
1944 U.S. approves end to internment of Japanese Americans. U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issues Public Proclamation No. 21, declaring that Japanese American “evacuees” from the West Coast could return to their homes effective January 2, 1945.
1948 The Smithsonian Institution accepts the Kitty Hawk – the Wright brothers’ plane.
1957 The United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
1969 The U.S. Air Force ended its “Project Blue Book” and concluded that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial activity behind UFO sightings.
1973 Thirty-one people were killed at Rome airport when Arab guerillas hijacked a German airliner.
1978 The U.S.S.R. had been allowing only certain individuals out of the country such as a Jewish couple who sought medical help for their ailing baby and top scientist Venjamin Levich and his wife who wanted to immigrate to Israel. American senators were meeting in Moscow to get the Soviets to allow 200 Jews to immigrate to Israel.
1979 Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, was fatally beaten after a police chase in Miami, FL. Four white police officers were later acquitted of charges stemming from McDuffie’s death.
1981 Red Brigade terrorists kidnap Brigadier General James Dozier, the highest-ranking U.S. NATO officer in Italy.
1983 A terrorist car bomb planted by the IRA is exploded outside the Harrods Department store in Knightsbridge, central London killing 9 and injuring 75 other Christmas shoppers during the busiest time of the year.
1986 Mrs Davina Thompson makes medical history by having the 1st heart, lung & liver transplant at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England
1989 The Simpsons, television’s longest-running animated series, makes its US debut.
1992 U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement.
http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/dec-17-1992-pres-bush-signs-nafta-15205420
1992 Israel deported over 400 Palestinians to Lebanese territory in an unprecedented mass expulsion of suspected militants.
1997 U.S. President Clinton signed the No Electronic Theft Act. The act removed protection from individuals who claimed that they took no direct financial gains from stealing copyrighted works and downloading them from the Internet.
2002 U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the Pentagon to have ready for use within two years a system for protecting American territory, troops and allies from ballistic missile attacks.
2004 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law the largest overhaul of U.S. intelligence gathering in 50 years. The bill aimed to tighten borders and aviation security. It also created a federal counterterrorism center and a new intelligence director.
2005 President George W. Bush acknowledged he’d personally authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. following Sept. 11, calling it “crucial to our national security.”, referred to by the Bush administration as the “terrorist surveillance program”, and is authorized by executive order to monitor, without warrants, phone calls and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA ( National Security Agency ) to be a threat to the security of the United States.
2010 Mohamed Bouazizi immolates himself, the catalyst for the Tunisian revolution and the subsequent Arab Spring.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
