TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: NOV 17
0375 Enraged by the insolence of barbarian envoys, Valentinian, the Emperor of the West, dies of apoplexy in Pannonia in Central Europe.
1278 680 Jews arrested (293 hanged) in England for counterfeiting coins
1558 The Church of England is re-established.
1558 Elizabeth I aged 25, ascends the English throne upon death of her half sister, Queen “Bloody” Mary
1798 Irish nationalist leader Wolfe Tone committed suicide while in jail awaiting execution.
1800 The Sixth Congress (2nd session) convenes for the first time in Washington, D.C.
1831 Ecuador and Venezuela separated from Greater Colombia
1869 The Suez Canal is formally opened.
1903 Vladimir Lenin’s efforts to impose his own radical views on the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits the party into two factions, the Bolsheviks, who support Lenin, and the Mensheviks.
1913 The first ship sails through the Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
1918 Influenza deaths reported in the United States have far exceeded World War I casualties.
1922 The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, is expelled to Malta on a British warship
1951 Britain reports development of the world’s first nuclear-powered heating system.
1967 The American Surveyor 6 makes a six-second flight on the moon, the first liftoff on the lunar surface.
1968 Night of the “Heidi bowl:” NBC switched from football to movie of Heidi. In the missing 42 seconds, the lagging Raiders scored two touchdowns, defeating the Jets.
1970 Soviet unmanned Luna 17 touches down on the moon.
1970 Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse
1973 President Nixon told AP “…people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook”
1979 Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
1986 Renault President Georges Besse is shot to death by leftists of the Direct Action Group in Paris.
1988 Benazir Bhutto became the first woman leader of an Islamic country. She was elected in the first democratic elections in Pakistan in 11 years.
1989 Student demonstration in Prague put down by riot police, leading to an uprising (the Velvet Revolution) that will topple the communist government on Dec. 29.
1990 A mass grave was discovered by the bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand. The bodies were believed to be those of World War II prisoners of war.1993 US House of Representatives passes resolution to establish the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1997 62 people were killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt. The attackers were killed by police.
2010 Reasearchers trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms. It was the first time humans had trapped antimatter.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
