TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 17
1394 Jews are expelled from France by order of King Charles VI
1683 Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is the first to report the existence of bacteria
1778 The United States signed its first treaty with a Native American tribe, the Delaware Nation.
1789 William Herschel discovers Mimas, satellite of Saturn
1796 President George Washington delivers his “Farewell Address” to Congress before concluding his second term in office.
1862 The Battle of Antietam in Maryland, the bloodiest day in U.S. history, commences. Fighting in the corn field, Bloody Lane and Burnside’s Bridge rages all day as the Union and Confederate armies suffer a combined 26,293 casualties.
1868 The Battle of Beecher’s Island begins, in which Major George “Sandy” Forsyth and 50 volunteers hold off 500 Sioux and Cheyenne in eastern Colorado.
1903 Turks destroy the town of Kastoria in Bulgaria, killing 10,000 civilians.
1916 Germany’s “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen, wins his first aerial combat.
1933 New figures published for the New York area show the current average weekly wages for a number of employment types.
Physician $55.32 per week
Engineer $40.68 per week
Clerks $22.15 per week
Salesman $25.020 per week
Laborer $20.00 per week
Typists $15.09 per week
1939 Soviet Union invades eastern Poland while Germany has invaded Western Poland earlier in the month.
1944 British airborne troops parachute into Holland to capture the Arnhem bridge as part of Operation Market-Garden. The plan called for the airborne troops to be relieved by British troops, but they were left stranded and eventually surrendered to the Germans.
1947 James Forrestal sworn in as 1st US secretary of defense
1953 The Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, LA, successfully separated Siamese twins. Carolyn Anne and Catherine Anne Mouton were connected at the waist when born.
1962 The first federal suit to end public school segregation is filed by the U.S. Justice Department.
1966 FBI Agents today arrested 13 white men in Grenada, Mississippi on charges of savage attacks on young African-American school children using sticks, fists and a club earlier this week.
1972 “M*A*S*H,” premiers on TV
1976 The Space Shuttle is unveiled to the public.
1978 Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter sign the Camp David Accords, frameworks for peace in the Middle East and between Egypt and Israel
1984 9,706 immigrants became naturalized citizens when they were sworn in by U.S. Vice-President George Bush in Miami, FL. It was the largest group to become U.S. citizens.
1990 Newspaper Guild votes 242-35 to keep NY Post publishing
1991 North & South Korea joins the UN
1998 The United States government offered a reward for the capture of Haroun Fazil for his role in the U.S. bombing in Kenya on August 7, 1998.
1998 The U.S. announced a plan that would compensate victims in the Kenya and Tanzania U.S. Embassy bombings on August 7, 1998.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
