TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 17
362 Emperor Julian issues an edict banning Christians from teaching in Syria.
1579 Sir Francis Drake claims San Francisco Bay for England.
1775 The British take Bunker Hill outside of Boston, after a costly battle.
1848 Austrian General Alfred Windisch-Gratz crushes a Czech uprising in Prague.
1854 The Red Turban revolt breaks out in Guangdong, China.
1856 The Republican Party opened its first national convention in Philadelphia.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln witnesses Dr. Thaddeus Lowe demonstrate the use of a hot-air balloon.
1876 General George Crook’s command is attacked and bested on the Rosebud River by 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne under the leadership of Crazy Horse.
1885 The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York
1930 President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which boosts U.S. tariffs to historically high levels, prompting foreign retaliation.
1931 British authorities in China arrest Indochinese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
1932 The U.S. Senate defeats the Bonus Bill as 10,000 veterans mass around the Capitol.
1934 Twelve people die and another fifty one are injured during an attack on a parade. 30,000 ABC society members marched through the streets of Havana and as they reached Prado boulevard the radical guerrillas attacked.
1940 France surrenders to Germany but many thousands flee to England to continue the fight or join the the French Underground Resistance.
1947 President Truman declares that universal military training is necessary in the fight against totalitarian nations.
1950 Surgeon Richard Lawler performs the first kidney transplant operation in Chicago.
1953 Soviet tanks fight thousands of Berlin workers rioting against the East German government.
1963 The U.S. Supreme Court bans the required reading of the Lord’s prayer and Bible in public schools.
1967 Chinese scientists successfully launched the country’s first hydrogen bomb.
1972 The men were caught attempting to wiretap the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. The scandal ultimately led to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
1974 The Australian government reports that France detonated atom bomb over the Pacific Ocean. This explosion was one in a series of nuclear tests that France was supposed to conduct in 1974.
1974 The IRA has planted A bomb in the British Houses of Parliament, injuring 11 people.
1991 The Parliament of South Africa repealed the Population Registration Act. The act had required that all South Africans for classified by race at birth.
1994 Millions of Americans watch former football player O.J. Simpson–facing murder charges–drive his Ford Bronco through Los Angeles, followed by police.
1999 Following 100 Belgian schoolchildren falling ill due to drinking Coca-Cola which triggered a blood disorder that caused the destruction of red blood cells. Many Coca-Cola products has been taken off the shelves in four European countries.
2002 Australian scientists announced that they had “teleported” a laser beam—breaking it up and reconstructing it in another location.
2005 The Church of England named John Sentamu, a Ugandan-born cleric, as the Archbishop of York, making him the first black person to be appointed as an archbishop in the Church of England.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
