TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 17
180 6 inhabitants of Carthage, North Africa executed for being Christians. Earliest record of Christianity in this part of the world.
1203 Siege of Constantinople begins during the fourth Crusade, Crusaders aboad a Venetian fleet attack the city
1212 The Moslems were crushed in the Spanish crusade.
1453 France defeats England at Castillon, France, ending the Hundred Years’ War.
1762 Peter III of Russia is murdered and his wife, Catherine II, takes the throne.
1785 France limits the importation of goods from Britain.
1801 The U.S. fleet arrives in Tripoli.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders to the British at Rochefort, France.
1862 National cemeteries were authorized by the U.S. government.
1898 U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter take Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1917 The British royal family changed its name from the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor amid anti-German senitment during World War I.
1936 Spanish generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola lead a right-wing uprising, starting the Spanish Civil War
1945 President Harry Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet at the opening of the Potsdam Conference.
1954 Operation Wetback” is launched by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to remove about four million illegal immigrants from the southwestern United States, with a focus on Mexican nationals.
1955 Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA.
1960 American pilot Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court.
1966 Ho Chi Minh orders a partial mobilization of North Vietnam to defend against American airstrikes.
1974 A terrorist bomb planted in the Tower of London has left one person dead and 41 injured. No organization has claimed responsibility but the IRA is suspected.
1979 The Sandinista National Liberation Front Led by Daniel and Humberto Ortega have overthrown the regime in the central American republic of Nicaragua and taken the capital, Managua.
1986 The largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history took place when LTV Corporation asked for court protection from more than 20,000 creditors. LTV Corp. had debts in excess of $4 billion.
1987 Lt. Col. Oliver North and Rear Adm. John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal.
1989 The Stealth Bomber makes its debut The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit made its first public flight from Palmdale, California.
1996 Shortly after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner (Flight 800) bound for Paris explodes over the Atlantic, killing all 230 people aboard.
1997 F.W. Woolworth’s, the original five-and-dime store that started in 1879, announced today that its last 400 stores would close.
2008 The Rwandan parliament voted to give immunity from prosecution to former presidents of the country. The change to the country’s constitution is mainly thought to be a protection for the former President Kagame, who presided over the country during the genocide that killed over 800,000 people.
2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Eastern Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
