TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 17
1526 Pope Clemens VII publishes degree Cum ad zero – forms Inquisition
1777 France recognized American independence.
1790 Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone
1798 1st impeachment trial against a US senator (William Blount, Tennessee) begins
1862 General US Grant issues order #11, expelling Jews from Tennessee
1886 At a Christmas party, Sam Belle shoots his old enemy Frank West, but is fatally wounded himself.
1895 Anti-Saloon League of America formed, Washington DC
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.
1911 Eastern Oklahoma was under federal orders to enforce prohibition in the Indian area and the Osaga reservation. Shipments of liquor to Indians were forbidden and liquor control was put under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
1927 U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg suggests a worldwide pact renouncing war.
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.
1965 Ending an election campaign marked by bitterness and violence, Ferdinand Marcos is declared president of the Philippines.
1965 Largest newspaper-Sunday New York Times at 946 pages (50¢)
1968 An 11-year-old girl ( Mary Bell ) is sentenced to life in detention after being found guilty at Newcastle Assizes of the manslaughter of two small boys aged 3 and 4.
1969 The U.S. Air Force ended its “Project Blue Book” and concluded that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial activity behind UFO sightings.
1975 John Paul Stevens appointed to the Supreme Court
1978 OPEC raises oil prices 18%
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
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 President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in separate ceremonies
2005 President George W. Bush acknowledged he’d personally authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. following Sept. 11
2010 Mohamed Bouazizi immolates himself, the catalyst for the Tunisian revolution and the subsequent Arab Spring.
2011 North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies after more than a decade of iron rule; he was 69, according to official records, but some reports indicated he was 70.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
