TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 17
1524 Beginning of Giovanni da Verrazzano’s voyage to find a passage to China
1536 Francois Rabelais absolved of apostasy by Pope Paul III
1773 Captain James Cook becomes the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle.
1775 9 old women burnt as witches for causing bad harvests in Kalisk, Poland
1779 Captain Cook’s last notation in ship’s log Discovery
1871 1st cable car patented, by Andrew Smith Hallidie in the US (begins service in 1873)
1893 Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, is overthrown by a group of American sugar planters led by Sanford Ballard Dole
1900 Mormon Brigham Roberts was denied a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for his practicing of polygamy.
1913 All partner interests in 36 Golden Rule Stores were consolidated and incorporated in Utah into one company. The new corporation was the J.C. Penney Company.
1917 US pays Denmark $25 million for Virgin Islands
1939 The Reich issues an order forbidding Jews to practice as dentists, veterinarians and chemists.
1943 Tin Can Drive Day in the US, salvage collected for the war effort
1945 Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. Wallenberg was credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews.
1950 The Great Brinks Robbery – 11 men rob $1.2M cash & $1.5M securities from armored car company Brink’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts
1961 President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the “military-industrial complex”.
1977 Gary Gilmore became the first person executed in the U.S. since the death penalty was reintroduced.
1980 A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb prematurely detonates on a passenger train near Belfast, killing three and injuring five (including the bombers)
1985 A jury in New Jersey rules that terminally ill patients have the right to starve themselves.
1991 Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles on Israel
1991 Coalition airstrikes began against Iraq after negotiations failed to get Iraq to retreat from the country of Kuwait.
1996 Iraq agrees to talks concerning a UN plan to allow for the Iraqi sale of $1 billion of oil; proceeds from the sale would be used for humanitarian purposes
1997 Israel gave over 80% of Hebron to Palestinian rule, but held the remainder where several hundred Jewish settlers lived among 20,000 Palestinians.
1998 President Clinton became the first sitting U.S. president to testify as a defendant in a criminal or civil suit.
2007 Doomsday Clock set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea’s 1st nuclear test
2013 106 people are massacred by Syrian army forces in Homs
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
