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
1766 Britain repeals the Stamp Act
1776 British forces evacuate from Boston to Nova Scotia.
1845 Rubber band patented by Stephen Perry of London
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.
1931 Nevada Senate voted to legalize all forms of gambling in the state providing the impetus for the growth of Las Vegas.
1942 The Nazis begin deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
1942 Gen. Douglas MacArthur became supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.
1949 The first car with a Porsche badge is shown at International Automobile Show in Geneva, Switzerland on a Porsche 356.
1950 Element 98 (Californium) announced
1969 Golda Meir was sworn in as prime minister of Israel.
1970 The Army charges 14 officers with suppression of facts in the My Lai massacre case.
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 Richard Ramirez, the infamous Night Stalker, starts his killing spree when he kills two women in separate attacks in Los Angeles.
1992 Islamic Jihad truck bombs Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires Argentina killing 29
1993 86 killed by bomb attack in Calcutta
2001 The Eden Project opens , It is the worlds largest greenhouse and is designed to help save the worlds largest number of plant species from around the world, with a number of domes each emulating a natural climate and geographical area of ecologically
2003 President Bush delivered an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein: leave Iraq within 48 hours or face an attack.
2008 The Internal Revenue Service will begin to send more than 130 million economic stimulus payments in May and the Social security number will determine the date checks are sent.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
