17 June in history

1462 – Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II (The Night Attack) forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

 

1497 – Battle of Deptford Bridge – forces under King Henry VII defeat troops led by Michael An Gof.

 

1565 – Matsunaga Hisahide assassinates the 13th Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru.

 

1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England.

 

1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

 

1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.

 

1773 – Cúcuta (Colombia) is founded by Juana Rangel de Cuéllar.

 

1775 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Bunker Hill

 

1789 – In France, the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly.

 

1839 – In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kamehameha III issues the Edict of toleration which gives Roman Catholics the freedom to worship in the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Catholic Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace are established as a result.

 

1861 – Battle of Vienna, Virginia in the American Civil War.

 

1863 – Battle of Aldie in the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War.

 

1876 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud – 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

 

1877 – Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon – the Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.

 

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

 

1898 – The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established.

 

1901 – The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.

 

1910 – Aurel Vlaicu performed the first flight of A. Vlaicu nr. 1.

 

1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.

 

1932 – Bonus Army: around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.

 

1933 – Union Station Massacre: in Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.

 

1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

 

1940 – World War II: sinking of the RMS Lancastria by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France.

 

1940 – World War II: the British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.

 

1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.

 

1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.

 

1948 – A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.

 

1953 – East Germany Workers Uprising: in East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.

 

1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing many of the ironworkers and injuring others.

 

1958 – The Wooden Roller Coaster at Playland, which is in the Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver, Canada opens. It is still open today.

 

1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km²) of land undervalued (4 cents/acre) in the 1863 treaty.

 

1961 – The New Democratic Party of Canada is founded with the merger of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress.

 

1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.

 

1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem announced the Joint Communique to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out, killing one.

 

1963 –: Z. A. Bhutto then foreign minister, resigns.

 

1971 – President Richard Nixon declares the U.S. War on Drugs.

 

1972 – Watergate scandal: five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

 

1987 – With the death of the last individual, the Dusky Seaside Sparrow becomes extinct.

 

1991 – Apartheid: the South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.

 

1992 – A 'joint understanding' agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II).

 

1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase , O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

 

2003--United States troops shoot dead two former Iraqi soldiers who were protesting that they had not been paid since their country was occupied.

 

2004--The Pentagon confirms a report in The New York Times that CIA chief George Tenet – who steps down from the post next month – was allowed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to have an Iraqi prisoner secretly detained in alleged violation of the Geneva Convention

 

 

2005--Great Pakistani scientist AQ Khan is said to be stable after suffering a heart attack.

 

2007--Air strikes in Afghanistan on a suspected Al Qaeda headquarters kill several militants as well as civilians, including children.

 

2007--Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, outlaws armed factions of Hamas. (CTV)

2007--At least 35 people die in Kabul, Afghanistan as the result of a bombing of a police bus

 

2010--Israel's decision to ease the Gaza blockade is welcomed by the United Nations and the United States; Gaza's Hamas rulers say this is propaganda by Israel.

2010--Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warns Lebanon of the responsibility it holds if Israel has to involve itself in a "violent and dangerous confrontation" with a Gaza-bound international aid flotilla said to include dozens of Lebanese and several Europeans. (AFP)

--
Shahzad Afzal
http://www.pakistanprobe.com/