TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 17
733 Battle at Tours (Poitiers): Charles Martel’s Frankish and Burgundian forces beat those of al-Andalus under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi halting Islamic influence (date disputed)
1244 The Sixth Crusade ends when an Egyptian-Khwarismian force almost annihilates the Frankish army at Gaza.
1691 Maine and Plymouth are incorporated in Massachusetts.
1814 London Beer Flood. Vats of beer at the Meux and Company Brewery burst, flooding city streets with 610,000 liters of beer. The almost 15 feet tall wave of porter killed 8 people, some of whom were gathered for a funeral.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives at the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he has been banished by the Allies.
1863 General Ulysses S. Grant is named overall Union Commander of the West.
1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie)
1907 The first commercial wireless telegraph is sent over the Atlantic Ocean
1931 Mobster Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion for which he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
1933 Due to rising anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Hitler’s Germany, Albert Einstein immigrates to the United States. He makes his new home in Princeton, N.J.
1943 Burma railway completed, built by Allied POWs and Asian laborers for use of the Japanese army
1945 Colonel Juan Peron became the dictator of Argentina after staging a coup in Buenos Aires.
1968 Two black athletes make the “Black Power Salute” when they bow and raise a black gloved hand as the American National Anthem played during the victory ceremony for the 200m final in Mexico” as a silent protest against racial discrimination in the United during the Mexico Olympics Ceremony. On the 17th they were both sent home by the U.S.A. national team and many were upset that politics had been bought into the Olympics.
1973 OPEC oil ministers use oil as an economic weapon in the Arab-Israeli War, mandating a cut in exports and recommending an embargo against unfriendly states
1978 U.S. President Carter signed a bill that restored full U.S. citizenship rights to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
1987 U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
1989 The worst earthquake in 82 years strikes San Francisco bay area minutes before the start of a World Series game there. The earthquake registers 6.9 on the Richter scale–67 are killed and damage is estimated at $10 billion.
1994 Dmitry Kholodov, a Russian journalist, assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces; his murkier began a series of killings of journalists in Russia.
1997 The remains of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.
1998 A pipeline explosion in Jesse, Nigeria, kills 700 people with the resulting fire burning for nearly a week. It is believed that the explosion was caused by local towns people tapping into the pipeline to steal oil
2001 Rehavam Ze’evi, Israeli tourism minister and founder of the right-wing Moledet party, assassinated by a member of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); he was the first Israeli minister ever assassinated.
2011 Occupy Wall Street, an organized protest in New York’s financial district, expands to other cities across the U.S., including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Occupy Wall Street defines itself as a group of activists who stand against corporate greed, social inequality, and the disproportion between the rich and poor.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
