TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: SEPT 17
642 Arab forces under Amr ibn al-‘As conquer Alexandria
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.
1787 The Constitution was completed and signed by a majority of the delegates attending the constitutional convention in Philadelphia.
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.
1894 A day after Japan wins the Battle of Pyongyang it defeats China in the Battle of the Yalu River
1903 Turks destroy the town of Kastoria in Bulgaria, killing 10,000 civilians.
1908 Lt. Thomas Selfridge, a passenger in a plane piloted by Orville Wright, became the first airplane fatality when the craft crashed.
1939 With the German army already attacking western Poland, the Soviet Union launches an invasion of eastern Poland.
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 Forestall is sworn in as first the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
1952 “I am an American Day” & “Constituion Day” renamed “Citizenship Day”
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.
1976 NASA publicly unveils space shuttle Enterprise in Palmdale, Calif
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.
1986 US Senate confirms William Rehnquist as 16th chief justice
1990 Newspaper Guild votes 242-35 to keep NY Post publishing
1991 North & South Korea joins the UN
1992 Lawrence Walsh called a halt to his probe of the Iran-Contra scandal. The investigation had lasted 5 1/2 years.
1994 Heather Whitestone of Alabama became the first deaf Miss America.
1998 The U.S. announced a plan that would compensate victims in the Kenya and Tanzania U.S. Embassy bombings on August 7, 1998.
2011 Occupy Wall Street movement calling for greater social and economic equality begins in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, coining the phrase “We are the 99%.”
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
