Wednesday, October 17, 2012

October 17 in history


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OCT 16      INDEX      OCT 18
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539 BC:  Cyrus the Great marched into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile. Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Yehud Medinata and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

456 – Battle of Placentia: Ricimer, supported by Majorian (comes domesticorum), defeats the Roman usurper Avitus near Piacenza (Northern Italy) .

1091 – London tornado of 1091: A tornado thought to be of strength T8/F4 strikes the heart of London.

1346:  Battle of Neville's Cross: King David II of Scotland was captured by the English near Durham, and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.

1448 – Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.

1456 – The University of Greifswald is established, making it the second oldest university in northern Europe (also for a period the oldest in Sweden, and Prussia).

1558 – Poczta Polska, the Polish postal service, is founded.

1604 – Kepler's Supernova: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus.

1610 – French king Louis XIII is crowned in Reims Cathedral.

1660 – Nine regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, are hanged, drawn and quartered.

1662 – Charles II of England sells Dunkirk to France for 40,000 pounds.

1771 – Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, age 15.

1777:  American Revolutionary War: British general and playwright John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 British and Hessian troops to American General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York.

1781 – American Revolutionary War: British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown.

1800 – Britain takes control of the Dutch colony of Curaçao.

1806 – Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I of Haiti is assassinated after an oppressive rule.

1814 – Eight people die in the London Beer Flood.

1835:  Texans approve a resolution to create the Texas Rangers, a corps of armed and mounted lawmen designed to "range and guard the frontier between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers.

1860 – First The Open Championship (referred to in North America as the British Open).

1861 – Nineteen people are killed in the Cullin-La-Ringo massacre, the deadliest massacre of Europeans by aborigines in Australian history.

1864:  Confederate General James Longstreet returns to command of his corps in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

1888 – Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).

1905 – The October Manifesto issued by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

1907 – Guglielmo Marconi's company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland.

1912:  Following the example of Montenegro, their smaller ally in the tumultuous Balkan region of Europe, Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, beginning the First Balkan War in earnest.

1917 – First British bombing of Germany in World War I.

1918 – Haitian rebels attack the barracks of the Gendarmerie of Haiti, igniting the Second Caco War.

1919 – RCA is incorporated as the Radio Corporation of America.

1920s - Home of Al Capone
1931:  The Mobster Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

1933 – Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.

1940 – The body of Communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg found in South France, starting a never-resolved mystery.

1941 – World War II: a German submarine attacks an American ship for the first time in the war.

1941 – German troops execute the male population of the villages Kerdyllia in Serres, Greece.

1941:  The government of Prince Fumimaro Konoye, prime minister of Japan, collapses, leaving little hope for peace in the Pacific.

1943 – The Burma Railway (Burma–Thailand Railway) is completed.

1943 – The Holocaust: Sobibór extermination camp is closed.

1945 – A massive number of people, headed by CGT, gather in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina to demand Juan Perón's release. It calls "el día de la lealtad peronista" (peronista loyalty day)

1945 – Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens becomes Prime Minister of Greece between the pull-out of the German occupation force in 1944 and the return of King Georgios II to Greece.

1956 – The first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in Sellafield,in Cumbria, England.

1956 – Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer play a famous chess game called The Game of the Century. Fischer beat Byrne and wins a Brilliancy prize.

1961 – Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of former Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.

1964 – Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies opens the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the middle of the capital Canberra.

1965 – The 1964–65 New York World's Fair closes after a two-year run. More than 51 million people had attended the event.

1966 – A fire at a building in New York City kills 12 firefighters, the fire department's deadliest day until the September 11, 2001 attacks.

1966 – Botswana and Lesotho join the United Nations.

1970 – Montreal: Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte murdered by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1973:  The Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces a decision to cut oil exports to the United States and other nations that provided military aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 against Egypt and Syria.

1974:  President Gerald Ford explains to Congress why he had chosen to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, rather than allow Congress to pursue legal action against the former president.

1977 – German Autumn: Four days after it is hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaining hostages on board.

1979 – Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1979 – The Department of Education Organization Act is signed into law creating the US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services.

1980 – As part of the Holy See–United Kingdom relations a British monarch makes the first state visit to the Vatican.

1989:  Loma Prieta earthquake (7.1 on the Richter scale) hits the San Francisco Bay Area, killing 57 people directly (and 6 indirectly) and causing more than $5 billion in damages.

1989 – Peaceful Revolution: The East German Politburo votes to remove Erich Honecker from his role as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

1992 – Having gone to the wrong house for a Halloween party, Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori is shot and killed by the homeowner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

1994 – Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov is assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces.

2000 – Train crash at Hatfield, north of London, leading to collapse of Railtrack.

2001 – Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi becomes the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack.

2003 – The pinnacle is fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 56 metres (184 ft) and become the world's tallest highrise.



Saints' Days and Holy Days

Traditional Western

Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin.   Double.
Iadwiga [Jadwiga of Poland], Widow.  Semi-double.
Commemoration of the Octave of St. Edward.


Contemporary Western

Andrew of Crete
Catervus
François-Isidore Gagelin (one of Vietnamese Martyrs)
Ignatius of Antioch
Marguerite Marie Alacoque (formerly)
Rule of Andrew
Richard Gwyn


Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran



Eastern Orthodox

October 17 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

Prophet Hosea (820 BC)
Martyrs and Unmercenary Physicians Cosmas and Damian in Cilicia (4th century),
      and their brothers Leontius, Anthimus, and Eutropius.
Martyr Queen Shushanik (Susanna) of Georgia (475)
Monk-martyr Andrew of Crete (767)
St. Anthony, abbot, of Leokhnov (Novgorod) (1611)
St. Joseph (Jandieri) the Wonderworker, Catholicos of Georgia (1770)
New Hieromartyr Alexander (Shchukin), Archbishop of Semipalatinsk (1937)
Martyrs Ethelred and Ethelbert, princes of Kent (c. 640)

Translation of the relics (898) of St. Lazarus "Of the Four Days" (in the tomb),
      bishop of Kition in Cyprus
Repose of Elder Athanasius (Zakharov) of Ploshchansk Hermitage (1825),
      disciple of St. Paisius (Velichkovsky)
Repose of Nun Alypia, fool-for-Christ, of Goloseyevo (Kiev) (1988)


Coptic Orthodox








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