TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 17
HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY – Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick, is a religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick, the foremost patron saint of Ireland
0432 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)
0461 Bishop Patrick, St. Patrick, died in Saul. Ireland celebrates this day in his honor
1526 French king François I freed from Spain
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 from Boston to Nova Scotia.
1861 Italy is unified into a single kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II following the campaigns led by Giuseppe Garibaldi
1870 Wellesley Female Seminary (later Wellesley College) received its charter from the Massachusetts legislature.
1884 John Joseph Montgomery makes the first glider flight in Otay, Calif.
1886 Twenty African Americans are killed in the Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi.
1905 Albert Einstein finishes his scientific paper detailing his Quantum Theory of Light, one of the foundations of modern physics
1910 The Camp Fire Girls are founded in Lake Sebago, Maine.
1914 Russia increases the number of active duty military from 460,000 to 1,700,000.
1941 The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington. D.C.
1942 The Nazis begin deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
1950 Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced that they had created a new radioactive element. They named it “californium”. It is also known as element 98.
1957 Dutch ban on Sunday driving lifted
1960 Eisenhower forms anti-Castro-exile army under the CIA
1967 Snoopy and Charlie Brown of “Peanuts” were on the cover of “LIFE” magazine.
1969 Golda Meir becomes Israel’s first female Prime Minister
1972 Nixon asks Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
1973 The first American prisoners of war (POWs) were released from the “Hanoi Hilton” in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
1973 The photograph known as Burst of joy is taken. Photographer Slava Veder was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the image depicting a former U.S. prisoner of war being reunited with his family.
1991 New Jersey raises turnpike tolls 70%
1992 Islamic Jihad truck bombs Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires Argentina killing 29
1992 Apartheid in South Africa comes to an end
1995 US approves 1st chicken pox vaccine, Varivax by Merck & Co
1999 A panel of medical experts concluded that marijuana had medical benefits for people suffering from cancer and AIDS.
2000 In Kanungu, Uganda, a fire at a church linked to the cult known as the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments killed more than 530. On March 31, officials set the number of deaths linked to the cult at more than 900 after authorities subsequently found mass graves at various sites linked to the cult.
2003 President Bush delivered an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein: leave Iraq within 48 hours or face an attack.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
