TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 17
432 Saint Patrick, aged about 16 is captured by Irish pirates from his home in Great Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland (traditional date)
1753 1st official St Patrick’s Day
1755 Transylvania Land Co buys Kentucky for $50,000 from a Cherokee chief
1762 The first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York City.
1766 Britain repeals the Stamp Act.
1776 British forces evacuate Boston to Nova Scotia during Revolutionary War
1861 Italy is unified into a single kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II following the campaigns led by Giuseppe Garibaldi
1905 Albert Einstein finishes his scientific paper detailing his Quantum Theory of Light, one of the foundations of modern physics
1905 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, marries Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York.
1910 The Camp Fire Girls are founded in Lake Sebago, Maine.
1930 Mob boss Al Capone is released from jail.
1942 Gen. Douglas MacArthur became supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.
1942 The Nazis begin deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
1962 The Soviet Union asks the United States to pull out of South Vietnam.
1969 Golda Meir becomes Israel’s first female Prime Minister
1972 Nixon asks Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
1973 First POWs are released from the “Hanoi Hilton” in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
1985 President Ronald Reagan agrees to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.
1992 White South Africans approve constitutional reforms giving legal equality to blacks.
1992 Islamic Jihad truck bombs Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires Argentina killing 29
1993 86 killed by bomb attack in Calcutta
1995 US approves 1st chicken pox vaccine, Varivax by Merck & Co
2003 President Bush delivered an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein: leave Iraq within 48 hours or face an attack.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
