TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: MAY 17
1527 Pánfilo de Narváez departs Spain to explore Florida with 600 men – by 1536 only 4 survive
1536 Anne Boleyn’s 4 “lovers” executed
1630 Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi sees the belts on Jupiter’s surface.
1681 Louis XIV sends an expedition to aid James II in Ireland. As a result, England declares war on France.
1733 England passes Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum & molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions
1756 Britain declared war on France, beginning the French and Indian War.
1792 The New York Stock Exchange was established when a group of 24 brokers and merchants met by a tree on what is now Wall Street and signed the Buttonwood Agreement.
1881 Frederick Douglass is appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.
1932 Congress changes the name “Porto Rico” to “Puerto Rico”
1948 The Soviet Union recognized the new state of Israel.
1954 The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled for school integration in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The ruling declared that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.
1961 Castro offers to exchange Bay of Pigs prisoners for 500 bulldozers
1973 Televised Watergate hearings opened, headed by North Carolina senator Sam Ervin.
1980 Rioting erupted in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. Eight people were killed in the rioting.
1987 In the Persian Gulf the American guided missile frigate USS Stark is struck by 2 Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft; only one detonates, but 37 sailors are killed and 21 are wounded. Whether the launch was deliberate or a mistake is still debated.
1990 The WHO deletes homosexuality from its list of mental diseases
1996 U.S. President Clinton signed a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in. Megan’s Law was named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in 1994.
1999 Ehud Barak becomes Prime Minister of Israel. During his tenure, Barak attempted to revive the peace negotiations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). However, his efforts were unsuccessful.
2000 Thomas E. Blanton Jr. and David Luker surrendered to police in Birmingham, AL. The two former Ku Klux Klan members were arrested on charges from the bombing of a church in 1963 that killed four young black girls.
2004 Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage
2006 The U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany was sunk about 24 miles off Pensacola Beach. It was the first vessel sunk under a Navy program to dispose of old warships by turning them into diving attractions. It was the largest man-made reef at the time of the sinking.
2007 Trains crossed the border dividing North and South Korea for the first time since 1953.
2016 The U.S. Senate approved legislation that would allow families of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
