June 17

It’s Iceland Independence Day and Eat Your Vegetables Day and World Juggler’s Day

ON THIS DAY…
1462 Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II in The Night Attack, and the latter is forced to retreat from Wallachia
1579 Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England
1631 Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth; her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, then spent more than 20 years to build her tomb, the Taj Mahal
1775 In the early days of the Revolutionary War, British troops attack Massachusetts militiamen in the Battle of Bunker Hill; the British suffer high casualties but capture the American position
1789As the French Revolution approaches, the French Third Estate, the assembly of commoners, declares itself the National Assembly, in an attempt to wrest political power from King Louis XVI
1837 Charles Goodyear obtained his first rubber-processing patent
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
1867 Joseph Lister in Glasgow, Scotland became the first surgeon to perform surgery under antiseptic conditions
1876 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook forces at Rosebud Creek in the Montana Territory
1885 The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor
1898 The US Navy Hospital Corps is established
1901 The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT
1919 The “Barney Google” comic strip by Billy De Beck debuted
1928 Amelia Earhart embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales; she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, though as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stultz
1933 In Kansas City, MO, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash were gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash
1939 Last public execution in France. Eugene Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the prison Saint-Pierre
1940 The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union
1944 Iceland becomes independent from Denmark and forms a republic
1946 Laurence Olivier’s The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France opens in US movie theaters
1947 The first globe-circling passenger airline was inaugurated by Pan Am Airways as it left New York; the fare to travel around the world was $1700
1950 The first kidney transplant operation took place in Chicago in a 45-minute operation performed by Dr. Richard H. Lawler
1950 Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel are married
1953 In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion
1957 Holidayland, a picnic and tent area located to the left of Disneyland’s main gate, opens
1960 Ted Williams becomes the fourth member of the 500 home run club with a home run at Cleveland Stadium in Cleveland, OH
1963 The United States Supreme Court ruled 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 Richard Lester’s satirical comedy The Mouse on the Moon opens in US movie theaters
1967 China tested its first hydrogen bomb
1970 Edwin Land patented the Polaroid camera
1971 Representatives of Japan and the United States sign the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, setting out a plan where the US would return control of Okinawa
1972 The Main Street Electric Parade kicks off at Disneyland
1972 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
1976 Four teams from the folded American Basketball Association (New York Nets, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, and Denver Nuggets) join the National Basketball Association
1987 With the death of the last individual, the Dusky Seaside Sparrow becomes extinct
1991 The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act, which had required all racial classification of all South Africans at birth
1992 A ‘Joint Understanding’ agreement on arms reduction is signed by US President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin
1994 Following a televised highway chase and a failed attempt at suicide, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman

BORN:
1821 E. G. Squier, newspaper editor, diplomat, and archaeologist who, with the physician and archaeologist Edwin H. Davis, conducted the first major study of the remains of the pre-Columbian North American Mound Builders
1832 Sir William Crookes, chemist and physicist who discovered the element thallium and showed that cathode-rays were fast-moving, negatively-charged particles
1867 John Robert Gregg, inventor of a popular shorthand system named for him; he first introduced his system in 1888 in the pamphlet Light-Line Phonography
1870 George Cormack, co-inventor of Wheaties cereal
1876 Edward Spitzka, anatomist and brain morphologist who autopsied the brain of Leon Franz Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley; at the time, he had just published an exhaustive series of eight papers on the human brain, but was only in the fourth year of his medical training
1882 Igor Stravinsky, Russian composer, considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music
1898 M. C. Escher, graphic artist known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints which features impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations
1900 Martin Bormann, Nazi shithead
1904 Ralph Bellamy, actor (His Girl Friday, Ellery Queen, Master Detective, The Wolf Man, Rosemary’s Baby, Pretty Woman)
1917 Dean Martin (Dino Paul Crocetti), singer, film actor, television personality, comedian and tne of the organizers of The Rat Pack, he was a major star in four areas of show business: concert stage, recordings, motion pictures, and television
1919 William K. Estes, psychologist, a leader in bringing mathematical methods into psychological research, who was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1997 for “his fundamental theories of cognition and learning that transformed the field of experimental psychology”
1936 Ken Loach, director (Land and Freedom, Family Life, My Name Is Joe)
1951 Joe Piscopo, actor, comedian, impressionist, businessman (Saturday Night Live, Johnny Dangerously, Dead Heat, Sidekicks)
1958 Jello Biafra (Eric Reed Boucher), singer/songwriter (Dead Kennedys)
1960 Thomas Haden Church, Emmy Award-winning actor (Broken Trail, Spider-Man 3, Sideways, Wings, Tombstone)
1963 Greg Kinnear, actor, comedian, Emmy Award-winning producer (Talk Soup, Little Miss Sunshine, Mystery Men)
1964 Erin Murphy, child actress (Bewitched)
1966 Jason Patric, actor (The Lost Boys, Sleepers, The Alamo)
1973 Louis Leterrier, director (The Incredible Hulk, Transporter 2, Unleashed)
1980 Venus Williams, professional tennis player, former World No. 1, and the reigning Wimbledon singles champion

DIED:
1881 James Starley, inventor and manufacturer, known as the father of the bicycle industry, dies at 51
1961 Jeff Chandler, actor (Broken Arrow, Return to Peyton Place, Drango), dies of vascular injury and exsanguination following disc herniation surgery at 42
1986 Kate Smith, singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”; she had a radio, TV and recording career spanning five decades, reaching its most-remembered zenith in the 1940s; dies at 79