On This Day

1486 — To guard against impure literature Berthold of Henneberg (Archbishop and Elector of Mainz) establishes in his diocese the first known censorship of the press.

1493 -– That “white European non-female” Christopher Columbus leaves the New World, ending his first journey.

1528 — Ferdinand of Austria, younger brother to “Holy” Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth, issues the first secular mandate forbidding the Anabaptist religious movement.

1949 -– A silent disc-shaped object circles Hickam Field near Honolulu (Hawaii) at 2:07 pm. It blinks once every second and flies away climbing into the northeast sky. The sighting is listed by the US Air Force as an “unknown.”

1952 — My good friend and ex-fellow-missionary JoeM is born.

1965 -– President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims the Great Society during his State of the Union address.

1974 -– President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

1975 -– Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first American-born saint. (I don’t know when she was born, but I can assert with confidence that there were thousands — if not millions — of American-born saints before.)

2007 -– Nancy Pelosi is elected the first female Speaker of the House in US history.

1656 — Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Quakers.

1773 — The East India Company tea ships’ cargo is burned at Annapolis.

1789 — President George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day.

1884 — George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film.

1916 — Paul Robeson is excluded from the Rutgers football team when Washington and Lee University refused to play against a black person.

1926 — A. A. Milne’s book Winnie-the-Pooh is first published.

1933 — Nazi Germany withdraws from The League of Nations.

1943 -– US Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortresses during an assault on Schweinfurt. (Today’s America likely would have called it quits after such losses.)

1960 — The idea of a Peace Corps is first suggested by Presidential candidate John F Kennedy at the University of Michigan.

1962 — A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed, thus getting the Cuban Missile Crisis under way.

1964 — Martin Luther King Jr wins the Nobel Peace Prize. And Leonid Brezhnev ousts Nikita Khrushchev as leader of the Soviet Union.

1986 — Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1991 — Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve democracy in her homeland.

1994 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

2009 — The price of gold spikes to a record high of $1,072 per ounce. The dollar slumps to a 14-month low against the euro (1.49:1). Crude oil futures go above $75 per barrel for the first time in a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average passes 10,000 for the first time in a year before closing at 9988.

1227 -– Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades. (That must have been back when Popes knew how to keep the politicians in line!)

1650 — Londoner Henry Robinson opens his Office of Addresses and Encounters — the first historically documented dating service. (eHarmony is still green behind the ears!)

1789 — The first US Congress adjourns. (Were they a “do nothing” Congress?)

1938 — In an effort to appease Adolf Hitler, British, French, German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, allowing
German annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. (Will there be a similar agreement signed regarding…Jerusalem, for instance?)

1966 — General Motors (yeah, that GM) introduces the Chevrolet Camaro, originally named Panther.

1982 — The Chicago Tylenol murders begin when the first of seven individuals die. (Can you believe we used to buy pills in relatively-unsealed bottles??!!)

2008 — The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history. (And that, my friend, was just last year.)

Before any other September 17 notes, a very short trip backward through time, noting September 17 in Polish history:

2009 — The United States announces it is scrapping its missile shield for Poland and Czech Republic.

1993 — The last Russian troops leave Poland.

1980 — The independent trade union Solidarity is established in Gdansk.

1939 — The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland.

1924 — The Border Defense Corps is established in the Second Polish Republic for the defense against local bandits as well as armed Soviet raids.

OK, so much for that brief introduction to Polish history. I’ll conclude this post with a few highlights from regular world history.

1630 — Puritans led by John Winthrop establish a settlement on the Shawmut Peninsula in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The settlement is later named Boston.

1787 — The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia.

1796 — President George Washington gives his Farewell Address. He declines to run for a third term as President and warns against foreign entanglements.

1814 -– Francis Scott Key finishes writing The Star-Spangled Banner.

1859 -– Joshua A. Norton declares himself “Emperor Norton I” of the United States.

1976 -– NASA unveils its space shuttle, Enterprise.

1978 -– The Camp David Accords are signed by Israel and Egypt and the United States.

2003 — Ohio re-ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.