17 Oct History: This Date

<< Oct 16| HISTORY “4” “2”DAY |Oct 18 >>
Events, deaths, births, of 17 OCT
[For Oct 17 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1582~1699: Oct 27 — 1700s: Oct 28 — 1800s: Oct 29 — 1900~2099: Oct 30]

ALTERNATE SITES ALL FOR 031017 ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” OCTOBER

On a 17 October:

2002 Sears Roebuck reports 3rd-quarter 2002 earnings per share of 59 cents, down from 80 cents in the 2001 3rd quarter and its own 07 October 2002 forecast of 80 to 82 cents. It now expects full-year comparable earnings per share of $4.86, down from its prior estimate of $5.15.This is mainly due to higher-than-expected credit card losses. Fitch places Sears' 'A-' senior unsecured debt on Rating Watch Negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, 36 million of the 316 million shares of Sears are traded, dropping from their previous close of $33.95 to an intraday low of $22.76 and closing at $23.15. They had traded as high as $59.91 as recently as 03 June 2002. [5~year price chart >]

2002 U.S. Timberlands (TIMBZ) agrees to be acquired by its management at $3 a share, to go private, subject to financing and legal arrangements. On the NASDAQ, 380'000 of the 13 million TIMBZ shares are traded, surging from the previous close of $0.74 to an intraday high of $2.80 and closing at $2.62. They had traded as low as $0.55 as recently as 09 October 2002, after dropping from a high of $2.56 on 29 April 2002. They had started trading at $18.13 on 22 June 1998 and after peaking at $19.50 on 06 July 1998 had been in a downtrend that was threatening to get them delisted. [5~year price chart >]

2002 Human world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, with Black, and computer program Deep Fritz, with White, play to a draw the 7th of the 8 games in their match of 04, 06, 08, 10, 13, 15, 17, and 19 October 2002, remaining tied, now 3.5 to 3.5. — 1. d4 – Nf6 / 2. c4 – e6 / 3. Nf3 – b6 / 4. g3 – Bb7 / 5. Bg2 – Be7 / 6. 0-0 – 0-0 7. Nc3 – Ne4 8. Qc2 – Nxc3 / 9. Qxc3 – c5 / 10. Rd1 – d6 / 11. b3 – Bf6 / 12. Bb2 – Qe7 / 13. Qc2 – Nc6 / 14. e4 – e5 / 15.d5 – Nd4 / 16. Bxd4 – cxd4 / 17. Bh3 – g6 / 18. a4 – a5 / 19. Rab1 – Ba6 / 20. Re1 – Kh8 / 21. Kg2 – Bg7 / 22. Qd3 – Rae8 / 23. Nd2 – Bh6 / 24. f4 – Qc7 / 25. Rf1 – Kg8 / 26. Rbe1 – Qd8 / 27.Kg1 – Bb7 / 28. Re2 – Ba6 draw [final position below]

2002 Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala, a Democrat, is charged with 20 felonies.
2000 Ending an emergency summit in Egypt, Israeli and Palestinian leaders agree to publicly urge an end to the bloody conflict of the al~Aqsa intifada and to consult within two weeks on restarting the ravaged Mideast peace process.— Israel y Palestina firman un frágil alto el fuego en la cumbre de Egipto.
2000 Los consejos de administración de las compañías eléctricas Iberdrola y Endesa aprueban su fusión.

2000 Andras Toma is promoted and discharged after 56 years in Hungarian army         ^top^
      Andras Toma, 74, gets a long-overdue promotion and is discharged from the military after 56 years of service, most of them spent languishing in a psychiatric ward in Siberia. No one in Hungarian history has been in the military this long,
      Toma was a Hungarian conscript in 1944, when he was captured by Soviet troops in Poland and ended up in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp. He was considered mentally unbalanced because his native Hungarian was mistaken for gibberish, and in 1947 was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Kotelnich, 1100 km east of Moscow. While his comrades were repatriated in the years after the war, Toma was forgotten. He languished in the hospital for 53 years, rarely speaking to anyone, until a chance encounter with a Hungarian-speaking Slovak doctor who thought he recognized his language.
      The Hungarian embassy in Moscow was contacted in December 1999, and Toma was flown to Budapest in August 2000. Later in 2000, he is expected to be reunited with blood relatives -- proven to be so by DNA tests -- in the eastern Hungarian village where he grew up.

2000 Charlotte, a 140-kg pig with a first-class ticket to Seattle, with her human, Maria Tirotta Andrews (whose stress Charlotte relieves), Andrews's daughter, boards USArivays flight 107 in Philadelphia. The pig sleeps through most of the 6-hour flight. But as the Boeing 757 lands in Seattle, it goes hog wild, running squealing through the plane and defecating. The FAA would investigate.

1999 Russian troops poised outside Grozny. -- Putin says no to 'large-scale' action (CNN) -- Chechen president talks peace, readies for war (CNN)
1998 Agentes de Scotland Yard detienen en Londres a Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte por orden del juez español Baltasar Garzón.
1996 Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires security chief Alexander Lebed, one day after the former general was accused by a rival of building his own rogue army.

1996 Prodigy becomes Internet service provider ^top^
Prodigy re-launches itself as an Internet access provider. A one-time leader in the online service business, the joint venture between Sears and IBM found its membership flagging in the face of competition from America Online and the increasing popularity of the Web. Sears and IBM sold the service earlier in 1996 to a cellular technology firm. Although Prodigy didn't scrap its entire proprietary service, executives made it clear that Internet access would become the company's main focus. The company went public in 1998.

1994 Leaders of Israel and Jordan initial a draft peace treaty.
1991 La OTAN decide en Taormina (Italia) eliminar el 80% de su arsenal táctico en Europa, el mayor recorte de armamento nuclear de su historia.
1988 Lyndon LaRouche pleads innocent to fraud, conspiracy indictment
1988 Phillip Morris announces $11 Billion tender offer for Kraft

1986 US aid to Contras signed into law         ^top^
      In a short-lived victory for the Nicaraguan policy of the Reagan administration, the President signs into law an act of Congress approving $100 million of military and "humanitarian" aid for the Contras. Unfortunately for Ronald Reagan and his advisors, the Iran-Contra scandal is just about to break wide open, seriously compromising their goal of overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Congress, and a majority of the American public, had not been supportive of the Reagan administration's efforts to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Reagan began a "secret war" to bring down the Nicaraguan government soon after taking office in 1981. Millions of dollars, training, and arms were funneled to the Contras (an armed force of Nicaraguan exiles intent on removing the leftist Nicaraguan regime) through the CIA. American involvement in the Contra movement soon became public, however, as did disturbing reports about the behavior of the Contra force. Charges were leveled in newspapers and in Congress that the Contras were little more than murderers and drug runners; rumors of corruption and payoffs were common. Congress steadily reduced US assistance to the Contras, and in 1984 passed the second Boland Amendment prohibiting US agencies from giving any aid to the group.
      Even before this action, however, the Reagan administration had been covertly subverting any attempts to limit the Contra war through extra-legal and illegal means (one result being the Iran-Contra scandal). Even with this illegal aid the Contra effort stalled by late 1985. Reagan went on a full pressure media campaign to convince the American people and Congress that the Contras were worthy of assistance. Reagan claimed that the Sandinista government was a satellite of the Soviet Union, that Nicaragua was instigating revolution in neighboring Central American nations, and that the Contras were merely to be used as a "shield" against any possible Sandinista encroachments in the region. He was able to convince Congress to provide $100 million of aid, some of it designated as "humanitarian" assistance to the hungry and sick Contras and their supporters. However, news sources began to break the story about the Iran-Contra scandal only a short time later. Congress began an investigation into the Reagan administration's clandestine and illegal support of the Contras during the years prior to the passage of the $100 million aid package. The investigation uncovered a scheme whereby some of the funds from illegal US arms sales to Iran were funneled to the Contras. The Contra war effort staggered on, creating death and destruction in the Nicaraguan countryside and little else, until a peace plan put together by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias was finally accepted by the Sandinista government. In 1990, elections were held in Nicaragua, which resulted in the Sandinistas losing the presidency.

1986 US Senate approved immigration bill prohibiting hiring of illegal aliens and offered amnesty to illegals who entered prior to 1982

1985 El novelista francés Claude Simon gana el premio Nobel de Literatura. — MORE
1984 Concluye en Madrid la reunión de cancilleres del Grupo de Contadora sin un Acta final de paz para Centroamérica.
1979 Mother Teresa of India is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — La religiosa Teresa de Calcuta, fundadora de las Misioneras de la Caridad, gana el premio Nobel de la Paz. — MORE
1978 Pres Carter signs bill restoring restoring US citizenship to Confederate President Jefferson Davis
1975 Se firma un acuerdo para la fundación de un Sistema Económico Latinoamericano (SELA).

1973 OPEC oil embargo         ^top^
      Eleven Arab oil producers decide to increase oil prices, cut back production, and reduce oil exports to Western countries and Japan., in response to the support of the United States and other nations for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. The same day [or a few days later???], OPEC, (The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), approved the oil embargo at a meeting in Tangiers, Morocco. The embargo would last five months.
      Almost overnight, gasoline prices quadrupled, and the US economy, especially its automakers, suffered greatly as a result. The US car companies, who built automobiles that typically averaged less than fifteen miles per gallon, were unable to satisfy the sudden demand for small, fuel-efficient vehicles. The public turned to imports in droves, and suddenly Japan's modest, but sturdy, little compacts began popping up on highways all across America. Even after the oil embargo crisis was resolved, American consumers had learned an important lesson about the importance of fuel efficiency, and foreign auto manufacturers flourished in the large American market. It took years for the Big Three to bounce back from the blow; eventually they gained ground with the introduction of their own Japanese-inspired compacts in the 1980s.
      OPEC ENACTS OIL EMBARGO: 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. According to OPEC, exports were to be reduced by 5% every month until Israel evacuated the territories occupied in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. In December, a full oil embargo was imposed against the United States and several other countries, prompting a serious energy crisis in the United States and other nations dependent on foreign oil. OPEC was founded in 1960 by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Venezuela with the principle objective of raising the price of oil. Other Arab nations and Third World oil producers joined in the 1960s and early 1970s. For the first decade of its existence, OPEC had little impact on the price of oil, but by the early 1970s an increase in demand and the decline of US oil production gave it more clout. In October 1973, OPEC ministers were meeting in Vienna when Egypt and Syria (non-OPEC nations) launched a joint attack on Israel.
      After initial losses in the Yom Kippur War, Israel began beating back the Arab gains with the help of a US airlift of arms and other military assistance from the Netherlands and Denmark. By 17 October the tide had turned decisively against Egypt and Syria, and OPEC decided to use oil price increases as a political weapon against Israel and its allies. Israel, as expected, refused to withdraw from the occupied territories, and the price of oil increased by 70%. At OPEC's Tehran conference in December, oil prices were raised another 130%, and a total oil embargo was imposed on the United States, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Eventually, the price of oil quadrupled, causing a major energy crisis in the United States and Europe that included price gouging, gas shortages, and rationing. In March 1974, the embargo against the United States was lifted after US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger succeeded in negotiating a military disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel. Oil prices, however, remained considerably higher than their mid-1973 level. OPEC cut production several more times in the 1970s, and by 1980 the price of crude oil was 10 times what it had been in 1973. By the early 1980s, however, the influence of OPEC on world oil prices began to decline; Western nations were successfully exploiting alternate sources of energy such as coal and nuclear power, and large, new oil fields had been tapped in the United States and other non-OPEC oil-producing nations.

1972 Peace talks between Pathet Lao and Royal Lao government begin in Vietnam.

1966 Vietnam: US President goes to Asia seeking support for Vietnam war ^top^
President Johnson leaves Washington for a 17-day trip to seven Asian and Pacific nations and a conference scheduled in Manila. En route to Manila, Johnson visited New Zealand and Australia; in Melbourne, antiwar demonstrators heckled him. In Manila, he met with other Allied leaders who had forces in South Vietnam and they pledged to withdraw their troops within six months if North Vietnam "withdraws its forces to the North and ceases infiltration of South Vietnam.” A communiqué signed by the seven participants (the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Vietnam, Thailand, and the United States) included a four-point "Declaration of Peace" that stressed the need for a "peaceful settlement of the war in Vietnam and for future peace and progress" in the rest of Asia and the Pacific. When the conference concluded on October 26, Johnson flew to South Vietnam for a surprise two-and-a-half hour visit with US troops at Cam Ranh Bay.

1965 Aparece en EE.UU. un número dominical del New York Times con 946 páginas y un peso de 3,4 kg.
1965 Varios políticos de los estados miembros de la CEE (Comunidad Económica Europea) exigen proseguir con la integración europea, en caso extremo, incluso sin Francia.

1962 Kennedy keeps secret the Cuban Missile Crisis
     On 16 October, US president Kennedy found out that the Soviets were building bases in Cuba for SS-4 nuclear missiles. That same day Kennedy formed and started consulting with the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EX-COMM).
     But the Soviets didn't know that the US knew.. The US public didn't know yet either. If the Soviets found out, they might hide the missiles or launch them if they were ready. If the public found out, the US would panic. Consequently, Kennedy broke off no public engagements for the next four days.
      On 17 October, Kennedy flies to Connecticut to campaign for the Democratic Party and congressional candidate Abe Ribicoff. But every spare moment was spent concentrating on the crisis. Robert Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen met the President at the airport on his return to Washington, and filled him in on the day's deliberations. Throughout EX-COMM's discussions, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and especially the Air Force strongly argued for an air strike. The Air Force suggested bombing Cuba with over 100 sorties.

1961 NY Museum of Modern Art hung Henri Matisse's "Le Bateau" upside-down, It wasn't corrected until December 3rd
1959 Se producen grandes inundaciones en Tabasco, México.
1959 Fidel Castro Ruz nombra a su hermano Raúl ministro de las Fuerzas Armadas.
1957 French author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — MORE
1954 Se produce la famosa marcha de los descamisados en Buenos Aires.
1951 Los británicos ocupan el canal de Suez.
1949 El presidente boliviano Hertzog dimite por motivos de salud y le sucede Mamerto Urriolagoitia Harriague.
1949 The first long-distance dial telephone service begins as the president of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph dials New York City from Oakland, California. The call lasts about one minute. Previously, long-distance calls were placed by telephone operators.
1947 Se firma en Londres un tratado por el que Gran Bretaña reconoce la independencia de Birmania.
1945 Colonel Juan Perón leads a coup, becoming dictator of Argentina
1944 Las elevadas pérdidas sufridas por el general Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny obligan a detener la ofensiva francesa en los Vosges.

1943 US's Young Communist League disbands ^top^
In the face of mounting opposition to communism and the Soviet Union in American society, the Young Communist League (YCL) declares itself dissolved at a special convention held in New York City. In an about turn of face, the four hundred delegates organize American Youth for Democracy, which only offers membership to non-Communists. During the 1940s, American Communist groups that once enjoyed prominence in labor organizations and other groups suddenly find themselves alienated from US society. Most American Communists, like the members of YCL, publicly abandon their ideology and Soviet connections in order to avoid being blacklisted.

1942 Comienza el último ataque alemán contra Stalingrado.
1942 Tropas de EE.UU. desembarcan en Liberia.

1941 Anti-militarism Japanese government falls         ^top^
      The government of Prince Fumimaro Konoye, prime minister of Japan, collapses, leaving little hope for peace in the Pacific. Konoye, a lawyer by training and well studied in Western philosophy, literature, and economics, entered the Japanese Parliament's upper house by virtue of his princely status and immediately pursued a program of reform. High on his agenda was a reform of the army general staff in order to prevent its direct interference in foreign policy decisions. He also sought an increase in parliamentary power. An antifascist, Konoye championed an end to the militarism of Japanese political structures, especially in light of the war in Manchuria, which began in 1931.
      Appointed prime minister in 1933, Konoye's first cabinet fell after full-blown war broke out between Japan and China. In 1940, Konoye was asked to form a second cabinet. But as he sought to contain the war with China, relations with the United States deteriorated, to the point where Japan was virtually surrounded by a US military presence and threats of sanctions. On August 27, 1941, Konoye requested a summit with President Roosevelt in order to diminish heightening tensions. Envoys were exchanged, but no direct meeting with the president took place. (The US government believed it could send the wrong message to China-and that Japan was on the losing end of that war anyway.) In October, Konoye resigned because of increasing tension with his army minister, Tojo Hideki. Tojo succeeded Konoye as prime minister, holding on to his offices of army minister and war minister. Imperial Japan's foreign policy was now formally controlled by the military. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Konoye was put under military surveillance, his political career all but over until 1945, when the emperor considered sending him to Moscow to negotiate peace terms. That meeting never came off. When Saipan fell to the US Marines and Army, Tojo's government collapsed. Upon Japan's surrender, Tojo shot himself to prevent being taken prisoner by the United States. He lived and was tried by an international war-crimes tribunal--and hanged on December 22, 1948. As for Konoye, the grand irony of his career came when he was served with an arrest warrant by the US occupying force for suspicion of war crimes. Rather than submit to arrest, he committed suicide by drinking poison

1939 Repli français en Moselle
1939 Lluís Companys i Jover, ex presidente de la Generalitat de Cataluña, se refugia en Francia.
1936 En el marco de la Guerra Civil Española, las tropas "nacionales" rompen el cerco republicano de Oviedo, con lo que terminan 90 días de asedio.
1933 Due to rising anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Nazi Germany, Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee. He would make his new home in Princeton, N.J.

1931 Gangster Al Capone is sentenced to prison. ^top^
Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion, a relatively minor offense for a man who oversaw an elaborate liquor bootlegging network, extensive prostitution rings, and various gambling operations. For many years, crime did pay for Capone. By 1927, he had hauled in an impressive--and tax-free--fortune worth over $100 million. Of course, with his penchant for maiming and killing the competition, Capone was just a bit more dangerous than the average entrepreneur. However, usual strong-arm tactics couldn't help him bully past the IRS. Capone is sentenced to an eleven-year prison term and to pay $80'000 in fines and court fees. He would be released in 1939.

1929 Nadir Shah, proclamado nuevo rey de Afganistán.
1924 Los voluntarios-mercaderes de China, organización armada y financiada por los ricos mercaderes de Cantón y Hong Kong, organizan una revuelta contra Sun Yat-Sen.
1923 La banca nacional alemana declara que las sucursales no aceptarán más papel moneda de emergencia a partir del 22 de este mes para poner fin a la inflación.
1918 Yugoslavia proclaims itself a republic
1914 Comienza la gran batalla de Flandes, que duró hasta el 15 noviembre y que marca el inicio de la primera guerra mundial.
1912 Bulgaria declares war on Turkey, joining its ally in the Balkan League, Montenegro, which had already declared war on Turkey on 08 October.— Estalla la primera guerra balcánica. Bulgaria, Grecia, Serbia y Montenegro declaran la guerra a Turquía.
1907 Six years after the first transatlantic radio signal was sent, regular radio service starts. The first message was sent in code from Ireland via Nova Scotia to The New York Times in New York City.
1904 Chile y Bolivia firman un tratado de paz y amistad que pone fin a las antiguas diferencias entre ambos países.
1904 El infante Alfonso, sobrino de Alfonso XIII, es proclamado Príncipe de Asturias tras la muerte de la princesa heredera, María de las Mercedes.
1888 Alejandro III, Zar de Rusia y sus acompañantes salen ilesos de un atentado contra el tren imperial cerca de la estación de Borki, en la región de Jarkov.
1877 Brigadier General Alfred Terry meets with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians' return to the United States.
1871 President Grant suspends writ of habeas corpus
1868 Constitution of Grand Duchy of Luxembourg goes into effect
1863 Lincoln calls for 300'000 additional volunteers to join the army
1863 General Ulysses S. Grant is named overall Union Commander of the West.

1835 The first resolution formally creating the Texas Rangers is approved         ^top^
      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.” In the midst of their revolt against Mexico, Texan leaders felt they needed a semi-official force of armed men who would defend the isolated frontier settlers of the Lone Star Republic against both Santa Ana's soldiers and hostile Indians; the Texas Rangers filled this role. But after winning their revolutionary war with Mexico the following year, Texans decided to keep the Rangers, both to defend against Indian and Mexican raiders and to serve as the principal law enforcement authority along the sparsely populated Texan frontier.
      Although created and sanctioned by the Texas government, the Rangers was an irregular body made up of civilians who furnished their own horses and weapons. Given the vast expanse of territory they patrolled and the difficulty of communicating with the central government, the government gave the men of the Rangers considerable independence to act as they saw fit. Sometimes the Rangers served as a military force, taking on the role of fighting the Indians that in the US was largely the responsibility of the Army. At other times the Rangers mainly served as the principal law enforcement power in many frontier regions of Texas, earning lasting fame for their ability to track down and eliminate outlaws, cattle thieves, train robbers, and murderers, including such notorious bandits as John Wesley Hardin and King Fisher.
      Even as late as the first two decades of the 20th century, the state of Texas continued to rely on the Rangers to enforce order in the wilder regions of the state, like the oil boomtowns along the Rio Grande. Increasingly, though, some Texans began to criticize the Rangers, arguing that they used excessive violence and often failed to observe the finer points of the law when apprehending suspects. As a result, in the 1930s, the state won control over the Rangers, transforming it into a modern and professional law enforcement organization.

1829 Delaware River & Chesapeake Bay Canal formally opened
1806 Napoléon Bonaparte arrives at the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he has been banished by the Allies.
1805 La capitulación de la ciudad alemana de Ulm pone fin a la campaña del mismo nombre, en la que tropas de Napoleón destrozaron un ejército austriaco de más de 80'000 hombres e hicieron más de 50'000 prisioneros.
1793 Con la derrota de 40'000 vendeanos a manos de 22'000 soldados republicanos termina prácticamente la guerra de La Vendée de la Revolución Francesa.
1787 Boston blacks, petition legislature for equal school facilities
1781 Cornwallis defeated at Yorktown

1777 Battle of Saratoga, a Patriot victory ^top^
During the American War for Independence, British General John Burgoyne surrenders with over 5000 British and Hessian troops to Patriot General Horatio Gates at Saratoga in New York. Ten days before, General Gates routed Burgoyne's forces at the Battle of Bemis Heights in New York, prompting a desperate British retreat that failed to break through the American lines. By October 13, over 16,000 Americans surrounded the British, and four days later, Burgoyne was forced to agree to the first large-scale surrender of British forces in the Revolutionary War. When word of the Patriot victory reached France, King Louis XVI agreed to formally recognize the independence of the United States. Soon after, French Foreign Minister Comte de Vergennes made arrangements with US Ambassador Benjamin Franklin to begin providing French aid for the Patriot cause.

Les insurgés des Treize Colonies anglaises d'Amérique remportent leur première victoire à Saratoga, non loin de New York. Bien que minoritaires parmi les colons, les insurgés avaient défié le roi Georges III en proclamant leur indépendance le 4 juillet de l'année précédente. Leurs premiers combats contre l'armée anglaise s'étaient soldés par des échecs. Mais le talent stratégique de leur général en chef, Georges Washington, et le soutien de jeunes nobles venus d'Europe allaient changer le cours des événements. Pendant l'été 1777, le général anglais Burgoyne descend du Canada avec 5000 soldats. Mais s'étant avancée en terrain difficile, son armée est bientôt menacée de mourir de faim. C'est ainsi que le général doit faire sa reddition à Saratoga. L'effet psychologique de cette médiocre victoire est immense en Amérique comme en Europe.
Le roi de France, Louis XVI, saisit l'occasion pour prendre une revanche sur l'ennemie héréditaire, la perfide Albion. Son gouvernement signe le 06 Feb 1778 un traité de commerce avec le vieux Benjamin Franklin, qui représente les insurgés. Ce traité consacre la reconnaissance par la France des Etats-Unis d'Amérique et leur ouvre les ports du pays. Un deuxième traité, signé le même jour, leur assure l'aide militaire de la France. Grâce à la flotte française, aux volontaires de La Fayette et au corps expéditionnaire de Rochambeau, les insurgés se trouveront enfin en situation de vaincre l'Angleterre.

1759 Carlos III desembarca en Barcelona para iniciar su reinado como monarca español.
1691 New royal charter for Massachusetts, now including Maine, Plymouth
1529 Henry VIII of England strips Thomas Wolsey of his office for failing to secure an annulment of his marriage.
1492 Columbus sights isle of San Salvador (Watling Island, Bahamas)
1483 Pope Sixtus IV launched the Spanish Inquisition, placing it under joint direction of the Church and state. Tomas de Torquemada, 63, was appointed Grand Inquisitor in charge of removing Jews and Muslims from Spain.— La Inquisición española queda bajo una única autoridad, al ser nombrado fray Tomás de Torquemada también inquisidor general para la Corona de Aragón.
1346 English forces defeat the Scots under David II, 22, during the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, Scotland. David II himself is captured. He would be released in 1357 for a ransom of 100'000 merks. David II was married at age 4 and became king at age 5. He died at age 46 after a rather disastrous reign.
1244 The Sixth Crusade ends when an Egyptian-Khwarismian force almost annihilates the Frankish army at Gaza.
0733 Se lidia la Batalla de Poitiers que marca el fin del avance musulmán en Europa.

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a 17 October: ^top^
2002 Eight Palestinians, in the afternoon, shot by Israeli tanks in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Two women, aged 72 and 32, an 11-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl were among the dead, killed when tank shells slammed into their houses. Two other fatalities were a 27-year-old man who owned a grocery store and a 45-year-old man.
2002 Seven persons by terrorist bomb at noon (04:00 UT) near the produce section in the Shop-o-Rama mall, in Zamboanga, Philippines. 143 are injured, 20 of them critically. Half-an-hour later another bomb explodes in a nearby store. Two other terrorist bombs are found unexploded in the area.
2001 Rehavam Zeevi, 75 [< photo], by three bullets in the head and face, in a hallway of the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem, at about 07:00. He was the extremist right-wing Tourism Minister who advocated the ouster of all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Two days earlier he had announced his resignation (effective today) in protest for a slight easing of restrictions on the movements of Palestinians. The assassination is the work of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in retaliation for the 27 August 2001 assassination of its leader Abu Ali Mustafa Zibri by an Israeli rocket attack on his office in Ramallah. Zeevi always refused to have bodyguards, usually carried his own weapon (though not when he was shot), and ostentatiously would stay in the Arab part of Jerusalem. Israel would exact severe reprisals againt the Palestinians and demand that Palestinian president Arafat order the arrest and extradition to Israel of the killers. Confined since 29 March 2002 to a few rooms in his Ramallah headquarters by a circle of Israeli tanks and troops, Arafat would order a trial, starting on 22 April 2002, with security officers with no legal experience acting as judges and lawyers. On 25 April Arafat would confirm the prison sentences, without right of appeal, of gunman Hamdi Quran to 18 years, his lookout Basel Al-Asmar to 12 years, getaway driver Majdi Rimawi to 8 years, and Ahead Gholmy to 1 year for having knowledge of the plot but not informing Palestinian authorities. The Sharon government of Israel is not mollified. Under 1994 interim peace accords (which Israel violates perhaps even more than the Palestinians), Palestinians are to extradite suspects to Israel -- unless they put them on trial in Palestinian courts. Israel has said it would not lift its siege on Arafat's compound until the wanted Palestinians hiding inside, including the suspected assassins, were turned over and brought to Israeli justice.
2000 Farid Musa ‘Issa Nasasreh, 28, Palestinian killed by gunfire from Israeli settlers, in Bet Furiq, Nablus district, West Bank.
1994 Dmitry Kholodov, 27, investigative reporter for Moskovsky Komsomolets, by bomb he unknowingly picks up at a Moscow train station in a briefcase which an anonymous caller just told him was there for him with information on corruption in Russian military intelligence. Authorities would take until 09 November 2000 to bring to trial for the crime the former head of the Russian paratrooper intelligence service, Colonel Pavel Popovskikh, his four subordinates, and a deputy head of a private security firm. On 26 June 2002 a military court would outrageously acquit the obviously guilty six. Pavel Grachev, defense minister at the time of the murder, had ordered the killing, but he is not even indicted. During questioning, Grachev told investigators that he had merely asked the officers to “sort it out” with Kholodov.
1991 Un teniente en uno de tres atentados con coche bomba de ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) que se suceden en Madrid y causan graves heridas a un comandante y a dos civiles.
1990 Ralph Abernathy civil rights leader

1989: 67 persons in San Francisco earthquake         ^top^
      The deadliest US earthquake since 1906 strikes the San Francisco Bay area in California. The quake, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, is witnessed on live television by millions of people watching the introduction to the third game of the 86th World Series of baseball between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics, held at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The tremor hits moments before the game, which is canceled, and sportscasters perform the duties of news anchors as they report on the resulting pandemonium in the stadium. The earthquake killed a total of sixty-seven people, while over three thousand others were injured and causing $7 billion worth of damage to infrastructure and more than 100'000 buildings.
—      Un terremoto sacude el norte de California y causa un centenar de muertos y cuantiosos daños materiales en la ciudad de San Francisco.

1983 Raymond Aron, sociólogo y ensayista francés.
1978 Cox, mathematician
1977: 3 of 4 hijackers, as West German commandos storm hijacked Lufthansa in Mogadishu, Somalia freeing all 86 hostages.
1963 Jacques Hadamard, 98, mathematician
1962 Natalia Sergeevna Gontcharova, innovative Russian painter, sculptor, and stage designer, born 04 June 1881. — MORE ON GONTCHAROVA AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.

1961 Over 200 Algerians massacred in Paris         ^top^
      Paris police massacre over two hundred Algerians protesting against police oppression and the curfew imposed against their community in Paris. In the three months preceding the protest, over thirty Paris policemen had been killed by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), a group that employed terrorist tactics to fight French colonial rule in Algeria.
      In response to the killings, Paris police chief Maurice Papon ordered a violent crackdown on Paris' Algerian community, explaining to officers that they would be protected against any charges of excessive violence. Police searched the Algerian ghettos for FLN members, indiscriminately killing a number of innocent Algerians before turning their guns on a large group of protestors gathered near the Seine River. The next day, the police release an official death toll of three dead and sixty-seven wounded, a figure generally disregarded by witnesses who observe bodies littering the area and floating in the Seine.
      In 1997, after it is revealed that Maurice Papon collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of France, sealed police archives detailing the massacre are made public by the French government. During Nazi occupation, Paton, a senior official in the Vichy regime, assisted in the deportation of French Jews to death camps, a wartime role he successfully hid for over fifty years while serving as the Paris police chief and later as a cabinet minister.
      Paris police massacre more than 200 Algerians marching in the city in support of peace talks to end their country's war of independence against France. Tensions were running high in Paris at the time, with Algerian terrorists setting off bombs in the French capital and randomly killing Paris policemen. In response, Paris police chief Maurice Papon ordered a crackdown on Paris' Algerian community, explaining to his officers that they would be protected against any charges of excessive violence. Police searched the Algerian ghettos for terrorists, killing a number of innocent Algerians before turning their guns on a group of 30'000 protesters who defied a curfew and gathered near the Seine River on the night of 17 October. The next day, the police released an official death toll of three dead and 67 wounded, a figure generally disregarded by witnesses who observed bodies littering the area and floating in the Seine.
      On 06 May 1981, Le Canard Enchaîné revealed that Maurice Papon had collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of France, and he was forced to resign his three-year-old position as budget minister in the cabinet. Papon, a former official in France's Vichy regime, was suspected of aiding in the deportation of hundreds of French Jews to the Nazi death camps.
     Papon was first indicted for crimes against humanity on 19 January 1983, but managed to delay the start of his trial until 08 October 1997. At its conclusion on 02 April 1998 (it was the longest trial in French history) he was found guilty of ''complicity in crimes against humanity'' and sentenced to 10 years in prison. During his trial, documents about the 1961 massacre in Paris surfaced, acknowledging that Papon's policemen had killed many more Algerians than previously admitted. But he was not tried for this crime, only for those against the Jews,
      On 18 September 2002, Papon, then 92 (he was born on 03 September 1910), would be released from prison on the grounds that his health was "incompatible with his remaining in detention."

1952 Vessiot, mathematician
1944 Rufino Blanco Fombona, escritor venezolano.

1941: 11 US sailors, as US destroyer Kearney is torpedoed by a German U-boat ^top^
Though the US are still neutral, a German submarine torpedoes the US destroyer Kearney 560 km southwest of Iceland, killing eleven crew members and seriously wounding two. The Kearney, the first destroyer attacked by a German submarine, sustains heavy damage but manages to stay afloat under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Danis. Two days later, the Kearney arrives safely in Iceland.

1937 Morley, mathematician
1934 Santiago Ramón y Cajal, médico español. Premio Nobel en 1906. — MORE
1928 Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee, English painter and illustrator born on 27 November 1853. — MORE ON DICKSEE AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1919 Henry Brodribb Irving, author. HENRY IRVING ONLINE: A Book of Remarkable Criminals
1918 Luigi Nono, Italian artist born on 08 December 1850. — [Was his personality affected because, as a child, he was always told by his mother: “Luigi, no no!” and when she saw his first picture, she said: “That is a Nono!”?] [Is this also why I cannot find on the Internet any reproduction of his artwork?]
1913: 28 persons, as Zeppelin LII explodes over London

1910 Julia Ward Howe, 91, composer (Battle Hymn of the Republic, below) ^top^

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.
(Chorus) Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
l can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.
(Chorus)
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish`d rows of steel,
"As ye deal with my contemners, So with you my grace shall deal;"
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on.
(Chorus)

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
He has sounded form the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
ln the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
(Chorus)
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was borne across the sea
With a glory in His being that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free,
His truth is marching on! -- (Chorus)

1910 William Vaughn Moody, poet. MOODY ONLINE: Poems , Poems
1897 Charles Anderson Dana, editor of The United States Illustrated: in Views of City and Country
1894 Three lynchers killed by Ohio national guard while rescuing a black man.
1892 Paul Peel, Canadian painter, active also in France, specialized in children, born on 07 November 1860. — more with link.
1891 James Parton, author. PARTON ONLINE: Famous Americans of Recent Times
1887 Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, mathematician and physicist discoverer of the laws of spectroscopy.

1859 Two of John Brown's sons and 10 others, in raid on Harpers Ferry         ^top^
      At midnight, the radical abolitionist John Brown leads a group of twenty-one followers, calling themselves the "Provisional Army of the United States," on a raid of the Federal arsenal of Harpers Ferry, located in present-day West Virginia.
      Brown, born in Connecticut on 9 May 1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader of the Free State forces in the territory of Kansas he fought pro-slavery settlers, contributing to the sharply divided territory's popular designation as "Bleeding Kansas.” For example on 24 May 1856 he led the "Pottawatomie Massacre" by John Brown's gang In retaliation for the sacking of the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, by pro-slavery forces, militant abolitionist John Brown led a raid against a pro-slavery settlement along Pottawatomie Creek. Brown’s small force, which included four of his sons, fell on the settlement at night and massacred five men, including two teenage boys.
      Although they owned no slaves, Brown deemed the Pottawatomie settlers deserving of capital punishment because they had supported the Missouri faction in the dispute over the Kansas territorial government. Trouble in the territory began with the signing of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas’ first election proved a violent affair as over 5000 so-called "Border Ruffians" invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature.
      To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, appointed territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of John Brown. In 1859, Brown left "Bleeding Kansas," as it had become popularly known, and settled on a more ambitious plan.
     Achieving only moderate success against slavery on the Kansas frontier, Brown settled on a more ambitious plan in 1859. With a group of racially mixed followers, Brown set out to Harpers Ferry, intending to seize the arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. Their republic would form a guerilla army to fight slaveholders and ignite slave insurrections, and its population would grow exponentially with the influx of liberated and fugitive slaves.
      At Harpers Ferry, Brown's well-trained unit is initially successful--in the space of two hours, the raiders seize the Shenandoah Bridge, Hall's Rifle Works, and the Federal arsenal, barricade the bridge across the Potomac, cut telegraph wires, and take some 60 hostages. But at 01:20, Brown's plans begin to deteriorate when his raiders stop a Baltimore-bound train, and then allow it to pass through.
      News of the raid spreads quickly and militia companies from Maryland and Virginia arrive the next day, killing or capturing several raiders. On 18 October, US Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, both of whom are destined to become famous Confederate generals, recapture the Federal arsenal, taking John Brown and several other raiders alive.
      John Brown was tried by the Commonwealth of Virginia for treason, murder and inciting slaves to rebellion. On 02 November, Brown is sentenced to death by hanging, and on the day of his execution, 02 December 1859, ten months before the outbreak of the Civil War, he prophetically writes, "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
     Abolitionist Thoreau wrote A Plea for Captain John Brown , A Plea for Captain John Brown
     Walter Hawkins wrote Old John Brown: The Man Whose Soul is Marching On
     Stephen Vincent Benet wrote John Brown's Body

1849 Fréderic Chopin, 39, Composer and pianist, in Paris, of tuberculosis.
1823 Johannes-Christiaan Janson, Dutch artist born in 1763. —
1817 West, mathematician

1806 Jean-Jacques Dessalines, 48, killed trying to put down a revolt under the Mulatto leader Alexandre Sabès Pétion. Dessalines, after proclaiming on 01 January 1804 the independence of Hispaniola under the name Haiti, and, in September 1804, himself as emperor Jacques I, discriminated against and massacred Whites and Mulattos.

1780 Bernardo Bellotto, Italian artist born in 1721 or 1724. — MORE ON BELLOTTO AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1757 René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, físico y naturalista francés.
1638 Jakob Isaaksz Swanenburgh, Dutch artist born in 1571.
1586 Philip Sidney, author. SIDNEY ONLINE: Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesie, A Defence of Poesie and Poems, Selected Works
1533 (before 18 Oct) Jacob Corneliszoon van Oostsanen d'Amsterdam, Dutch painter born before 1477. — links to images.

0532 Boniface II, Pope         ^top^
      Before his death in September 530, Pope Saint Felix IV, fearing a contest for the papacy between Roman and Gothic factions, in the presence of several of his clergy and of a number of Roman Senators and patricians, had proclaimed his aged archdeacon Boniface as his successor and threatened with excommunication those refusing to recognize and obey Boniface as validly chosen pope.
      On Felix's death Boniface assumed succession as Boniface II, but 60 out of perhaps about 70 Roman priests refused to accept him and elected Dioscorus. They feared the undue influence in papal affairs of the Ostrogothic King Athalaric, whose grandfather, Theodoric I, had helped to elect Pope Felix IV, a circumstance rendering more odious the latter's nomination of Boniface. Originally a deacon of the Church of Alexandria, Dioscorus was adopted into the ranks of the Roman clergy, and by his commanding abilities soon acquired considerable influence in the Church of Rome. Under Pope Symmachus he was sent to Ravenna on an important mission to Theodoric the Goth, and later, under Pope Hormisdas, served with great distinction as papal apocrisiarius, or legate, to the court of Justinian at Constantinople. During the pontificate of Felix IV he became the recognized head of the Byzantine party — a party in Rome which opposed the growing influence and power of a rival faction, the Gothic, to which the pope inclined.
      Both popes were consecrated on 22 September 530, Boniface in the Basilica of Julius, and Dioscorus in the Lateran. The Roman Church was thus involved in the seventh anti-papal schism. Fortunately it endured but twenty-two days, for Dioscorus died on 14 October 530, leaving Boniface in possession. The previous antipopes were Hippolytus (3rd century), Novatian (251), Felix II (355-365), Ursicinus or Ursinus (366-367, against pope Sant Damasus I), Eulalius (418-419, against pope Saint Boniface I), and Laurentius (498-501, against pope Saint Symmachus)
     In December 530 Boniface II soon convened a Roman synod and presented a decree anathematizing his late rival to which he secured the signatures of the priests who had been Dioscorus's partisans Each of these expressed regret for their participation in the irregular election and pledged future obedience. Boniface reconciled many by his mild, conciliatory administration; but some resentment remained, for he seems not to have been tendered a formal election by those who, despite their submission, had impugned the validly of his nomination; and five years later a pope of their choice, Saint Agapetus I, solemnly burned the anathema against Dioscorus.

Births which occurred on a 17 October:
1956 England's 1st large scale nuclear power station opens
1937 José María Álvarez del Manzano y López del Hierro, político español, alcalde de Madrid. — [With a name like that, it seems that he could have constituted the whole municipal council all by himself.]
1930 Jimmy Breslin (newspaper columnist; author: Table Money)
1920 Miguel Delibes, novelista y periodista español.
1919 Radio Corporation of America (RCA) created
1915 Arthur Miller, US playwright: Death of a Salesman; Playing for Time , Death of a Salesman , It Takes a Thief, Rhinoceros, The Misfits, A View from the Bridge.
1912 John Paul I 263rd pope, for 33 days (1978)
1904 Bank of Italy (would become Bank of America) opens its doors

1903 Nathanael West, novelist. ^top^
West is born in New York to a family of Jewish immigrants. He attended Brown University, then went to Paris to write for a year and a half, where he wrote his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), about disgruntled characters inside the Trojan Horse. Only 500 copies of the book were printed. When West returned to New York, he took a job managing a hotel, where he frequently gave free rooms to struggling writer friends, including Dashiell Hammet and Erskine Caldwell. In 1933, he published his novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, about a male reporter who becomes increasingly troubled by the pitiful letters he answers in his advice column. In the 1930s, West moved to Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1939 he published The Day of the Locust, considered one of the best novels about early Hollywood. West and his wife, Eileen McKenney, were killed in an automobile accident in California in 1940. Although West was not widely read during his lifetime, his popularity grew after World War II and after the publication in 1957 of The Complete Works of Nathanael West.

1895 Ernst Nepo, Austrian artist who died in 1971
1888 Bernays, mathematician
1880 Charles Kraft (cheese mogul w/brother James: Kraft Food Company)
1864 Elinor Glyn British novelist (3 Weeks)
1864 Marie Aimée Eliane Lucas~Robiquet, French artist who died in 1959. —
1860 Rederick O'Conor, Irish US artist who died on 18 March 1940. —
1859 Frederick Childe Hassam, US impressionist painter, etcher, and illustrator who died in 1935. — MORE ON HASSAM AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1855 Bessemer steelmaking process patented
1821 Alexander Gardner, US photographer who documented the Civil War and the West.
1817 Samuel Ringgold Ward Maryland, minister/abolitionist/author
1814 Friedrich Bamberger, German artist who died on 15 August 1873.
1786 François Edouard Picot, French painter and lithographer who died on 15 March 1868. — more
1760 Claude-Henri de Rouvroy comte de Saint~Simon, French social theorist, one of the chief founders of Christian socialism. He died on 19 May 1825. — [A few more names and he could have become a Spanish mayor] — In his major work, Nouveau Christianisme (1825) he proclaimed a brotherhood of mankind that must accompany the scientific organization of industry and society. His ideas had a great influence long after his death.
1759 Jacob(II) Bernoulli, mathematician
1711 Jupiter Hammon, first Black to publish poetry (Complete Works) in the British colonies in America.
1603 Frans de Momper, Antwerp Flemish painter and draftsman who died in 1660. — more
1582 Johann Gerhard, German, most influential of the 17th century Lutheran theologians. His writings attained a European circulation second only to the Bible and Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ.

Holidays Haiti: Dessalines Day (1806) / Malawi: Mother's Day

Religious Observances Anglican : St Ethelred's Day / RC : St Hedwig / Ang, RC, Luth : Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, martyr / Old Catholic : St Margaret Mary Alacoque (now 10/16) / Santos Ignacio de Antioquia, Víctor, Alejandro y Mamelta. / Saint Baudouin: Archidiacre de Laon au temps des mérovingiens, Baudouin est assassiné en 679 sur ordre du terrible Ebroïn, maire du palais des rois francs de Neustrie. Il est inhumé dans l'abbaye Notre-Dame de Laon.

PERGUNTA:
. Se os homens são todos iguais, por que as mulheres escolhem tanto?

Thoughts for the day : “He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.” [but preferably not at the same time]
“There are two sides to every question, and on each side two more questions.”
“He is no liar who cannot take on two lawyers.”
“He is no photographer who cannot take two slides.”
“He is no walker who cannot take two strides.”
“He is no politician who cannot straddle the fence between two sides.”
“He is no butcher who cannot cut up two sides.”
“He is no magician who cannot take two sides and make four.”

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