TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 17
1590 Governor of Roanoke Island colony, John White, returns from England to find no trace of the colonists he had left there 3 years earlier [or Aug 18, 1591]
1743 By the Treaty of Abo, Sweden cedes southeast Finland to Russia, ending Sweden’s failed war with Russia.
1787 Jews are granted permission in Budapest Hungary to pray in groups
1790 The capital city of the U.S. moved to Philadelphia from New York City.
1894 John Wadsworth of Louisville set a major league record when he gave up 28 base hits in a single game.
1903 Joe Pulitzer donates $1 million to Columbia University & begins the Pulitzer Prizes in America
1915 Mob lynches Jewish businessman Leo Frank in Cobb County, Ga after death sentence for murder of 13-year-old girl commuted to life
1944 The mayor of Paris, Pierre Charles Tattinger, meets with the German commander Dietrich von Choltitz to protest the explosives being deployed throughout the city.
1945 Korea is divided into North and South Korea along the 38th parallel
1947 The Radcliffe Line, the border between Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan is revealed
1960 American Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty at his Moscow trial for spying over the Soviet Union in a U-2 plane.
1962 18-year-old Peter Fechter was shot and killed by guards at the Berlin Wall, spurring riots.
1982 The U.S. Senate approved an immigration bill that granted permanent resident status to illegal aliens who had arrived in the United States before 1977.
1987 93-year-old Rudolf Hess, former Nazi leader and deputy of Adolf Hitler, is found hanged to death in Spandau Prison.
1988 Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq is killed in an airplane crash suspected of being an assassination.
1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony he had an “improper physical relationship” with the intern and on the same day admits before the nation he “misled people” about the relationship
2005 Israel begins the first forced evacuation of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, as part of a unilateral disengagement plan.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
