Today in History
17 February
Giordano Bruno
Moliere
Geronimo
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17 February |
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| 1370 Battle at Rudau: Germany beats Lithuania | ||
| 1461 In the Wars of the Roses, the Yorkists under Warwick were heavily defeated by Queen Margarets Lancastrians at the battle of St. Albans. | ||
| 1490 Charles de Bourbon, officer/governor (Lombardy) was born | ||
| 1568 Holy Roman Emperor agrees to pay tribute to the Sultan for peace |
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| 1583 J Henry Alting, Dutch theologist was born | ||
| 1598 Boris Godunov chosen tsar of Russia | ||
| 1600 Giordano Bruno, philosopher and mathematician whose theories anticipated modern science, was betrayed to the Inquisition and burned as a heretic in Rome. | ||
| 1621 Miles Standish appointed 1st commander of Plymouth colony | ||
| 1670 France & Bavaria sign military assistance treaty | ||
| 1673 Moliere, stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, French playwright and actor, died after collapsing on stage on the third night of his play "Le Malade Imaginaire," of "The Imaginary Invalid." | ||
| 1676 Kings Charles II & Louis XIV sign secret treaty | ||
| 1691 Thomas Neale granted British patent for American postal service | ||
| 1714 Parliament of Paris accepts Pope Clemens XI's "Unigenitus" degree | Giordano Bruno |
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| 1723 Tobias Mayer, "method of lunars" for longitude determination was born | ||
| 1758 John Pinkerton, Scottish historian was born | ||
| 1772 1st partition of Poland-Russia & Prussia, joined later by Austria | ||
| 1774 Raphaelle Peale, US, painter (After the Rain-1823) was born | ||
| 1781 Ren‚-Th‚ophile-Hyacinthe Lannec, France, inventor (stethoscope) was born | ||
| 1801 House breaks electoral college tie, chooses Jefferson presisent over Burr | ||
| 1817 1st US city lit by gas (Baltimore) | ||
| 1818 Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patents "draisine" (early bicycle) | ||
| 1836 HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin leaves Tasmania | ||
| 1841 Dutch ex-king Willem I marries Henriette d'Oultremont de Wegimont |
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| 1844 A Montgomery Ward, found mail-order business (Montgomery Ward) was born | ||
| 1848 Toscane gets liberal Constitution | ||
| 1854 British recognize independence of Orange Free State (South Africa) | ||
| 1854 Friedrich A Krupp, German arms manufacturer was born | ||
| 1855 Otto Liman von Sanders, German general in Turkey (WW I) was born | ||
| 1857 Samuel Sidney McClure, Irish-American newspaper editor/publisher was born | ||
| 1859 "Un Ballo in Maschera," an opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi and based on the murder of Gustavus, King of Sweden, was first performed in Rome. | ||
| 1864 The Confederate hand-propelled submarine Hunley, armed with a ram torpedo, sunk the Union's Houstanic off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. It is considered the first successful attack by a submarine. | ||
| 1865 Columbia SC burns down during Civil War | ||
| 1867 Gyula Andressy becomes premier of Hungary | ||
| 1867 William Cadbury, England, chocolate manufacturer (Cadbury) was born | Moliere |
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| 1870 Louis de Raet, Belgian economist/founder (Flemish People's Party) was born | ||
| 1877 Henri Vandeputte, Belgian author/poet (L'homme Jeune) was born | ||
| 1878 1st telephone exchange in SF opens with 18 phones | ||
| 1880 Tsar Alexander II of Russia survived an assassination attempt when a bomb exploded in the imperial dining room at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. | ||
| 1880 Tsar Alexander II of Russia survives an assassination attempt | ||
| 1883 A Ashwell patents free-toilet in London | ||
| 1885 Bismarck gives Carl Peters' firm management of East-Africa | ||
| 1896 London Country Councils' Muzzling Order becomes effective | ||
| 1897 National Organization of Mothers forms (Parent Teacher Association) | ||
| 1897 The Parent-Teacher Association was formed |
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| 1904 The opera "Madama Butterfly" by Giacomo Puccini was first performed, at La Scala, Milan, Italy. | ||
| 1906 Theodore Roosevelt's daughter Alice marries in the White House | ||
| 1909 Geronimo, last Apache chief to surrender to the American government, died in Fort Sill. | ||
| 1911 1st hydroplane flight to & from a ship (Glenn Curtiss, San Diego) | ||
| 1919 Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canadian Liberal prime minister from 1896-1911, died. He was the first French Canadian to be prime minister of Canada. | ||
| 1926 Avalanche buries 75 in Sap Gulch Bingham Utah, 40 die | ||
| 1929 Yasser Arafat, PLO-leader (Achille Lauro, Nobel 1994) was born | ||
| 1930 French govt of Tardieu, falls | ||
| 1933 1st issue of "Newsweek" magazine published | ||
| 1933 US Senate accept Blaine Act: ending prohibition | ||
| 1934 Albert I, king of the Belgians since 1909, died. He led the Belgian Army during World War I. | ||
| 1940 British destroyers board German Altmark off Norway | ||
| 1943 Dutch churches protest at Seyss-Inquart against persecution of Jews | ||
| 1944 Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins; US victory on Feb 22 | Geronimo |
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| 1944 US begins night bombing of Truk | ||
| 1945 A Soviet offensive forced the rocket expert Wernher von Braun and other scientists to evacuate the V2 rocket site at Peenemunde, East Germany. | ||
| 1946 Humanistic Covenant forms in Amsterdam | ||
| 1947 Voice of America begins broadcasting to USSR | ||
| 1950 31 die in a train crash in Rockville Center NY | ||
| 1953 Baseball star/pilot Ted Williams uninjured as plane shot down in Korea | ||
| 1957 Fire in Warreton Mo, kills 72 | ||
| 1957 Suez Canal reopens | ||
| 1959 1st weather satellite launched, Vanguard 2, 9.8 kg | ||
| 1962 Storm in Hamburg, kills 265 | ||
| 1966 French satellite Diapason D-1A launch into Earth orbit | ||
| 1967 Kosmos 140 (Soyuz Test) launches into Earth orbit | ||
| 1969 Golda Meir sworn in as Israel's 1st female prime minister | ||
| 1972 President Nixon leaves Washington DC for China | ||
| 1972 The British House of Commons voted to join the European Community. | ||
| 1974 49 die in stampede for seats at soccer match, Cairo, Egypt | ||
| 1976 Macau adopts constitution (Organic Law of Macau) | ||
| 1979 China invaded Vietnam in response to what it called Vietnamese aggression over the previous six months. | ||
| 1982 Zimbabwean Prime Minister Robert Mugabe sacked Joshua Nkomo from the government for plotting against the ZANU-PF Party. | ||
| 1982 Commencement of Sri Lanka's 1st Test Cricket match, v England | ||
| 1982 Thelonious Monk, U.S. jazz pianist, died. A key figure in the development of bebop, he played with Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. | ||
| 1982 Lee Strasberg, U.S. actor and co-founder with Elia Kazan of the Actors Studio in New York, died; the studio developed the "method" technique of acting. | ||
| 1983 Netherlands adopts constitution | ||
| 1985 3rd person to receive an artificial heart (Murray Haydon) | ||
| 1986 1st Francophone Summit convenes at Versailles | ||
| 1986 Libyan bombers attack N'djamena Airport in Chad | ||
| 1988 US Lt Col Wm Higgins kidnapped by Lebanese terrorists & later killed | ||
| 1989 6-week study of Arctic atmosphere shows no ozone "hole" | ||
| 1990 Czechoslovakia's Communist Party expelled former president Gustav Husak, ex-prime minister Lubomir Strougal and 20 other hardliners who came to power after Soviet tanks crushed the 1968 Prague Spring reform era. | ||
| 1992 Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered and cannabalized young men, was sentenced to 15 life terms. | ||
| 1993 Haitian ferry boat capsize in storm, 800-2,000 die | ||
| 1994 The decomposing body of former Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was dug up and identified, confirming the end of the republic's first elected leader. | ||
| 1997 Carl Sagan Public Memorial at Pasadena Calif | ||
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