Today in History, 17/10

Highlights in history on this date:

1662 - England's King Charles II sells Dunkirk to the French.

1748 - French troops lift siege of English at Pondicherry, India.

1777 - American rebels capture 5000 British soldiers at the Second Battle of Saratoga.

1849 - Frederic Chopin, Polish romantic composer and pianist, dies of tuberculosis in Paris.

1854 - British and French forces begin siege of Sebastopol in the Crimea; Miners burn down Eureka Hotel, Ballarat, after court dismisses murder charges against hotelier James Bentley, accused of kicking a young miner to death; The Age, Melbourne, published for the first time.

1855 - Englishman Henry Bessemer patents his process for making steel.

1902 - The first Cadillac motor car is made in Detroit.

1906 - German professor Arthur Korn transmits first picture by telegraph.

1912 - Turkey declares war on Bulgaria and Serbia.

1913 - Serbs invade Albania.

1918 - Republic of Yugoslavia is formally established.

1931 - US gangster Al Capone receives 11-year prison sentence for income tax evasion.

1933 - Albert Einstein arrives in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany.

1945 - Colonel Juan Peron stages coup in Buenos Aires and becomes absolute dictator of Argentina.

1957 - French author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

1961 - Algerians demonstrating in Paris against colonial rule are confronted by riot police. Authorities say three people died but human rights groups insist the figure is over 240.

1970 - President Anwar Sadat is sworn in as president of Egypt after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1972 - President Park Chung-hee declares martial law in South Korea, saying politicians cannot be trusted with the national task of unification.

1973 - Arab oil producers increase oil prices and cut production in response to US support of Israel in the Yom Kippur war.

1979 - Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1989 - The 103-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species decides on a worldwide ban on ivory trading.

1994 - Jordan and Israel sign an historic peace treaty, cementing an end to their 46-year state of war.

1995 - A bomb explodes on a commuter train in Paris, injuring at least 29 people.

1997 - Former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda is charged by the UN International Criminal Tribunal with genocide and crimes against humanity.

1998 A pipeline explodes in Nigeria when villagers try to siphon off oil, killing at lease 700 people.

2000 - Pope John Paul and Britain's Queen Elizabeth meet and speak of their hopes for Christian unity. It is her first visit to the Vatican in 20 years.

2005 - Bradley John Murdoch goes on trial for the murder of British tourist Peter Falconio on an outback Northern Territory highway in July 2001.

2006 - A British-educated civil servant, Lateefa al-Geood, becomes the first-ever female to serve as an elected member of Bahrain's parliament.

2007 - The body of two-year-old Dean Shillingworth is found stuffed inside a suitcase on the banks of a Sydney river. His mother is later charged with his murder.

2008 - The US government declares that the beluga whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet are endangered and require additional protection to survive.

2009 - Members of the Maldives Cabinet don scuba gear and use hand signals at an underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on earth.

2010 - Australian nun Mary MacKillop (1842-1909) is canonised as St Mary of the Cross at a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican's St Peter's Square.

2013 - The worst bushfires since the 1960s hit NSW, mostly the Blue Mountains, where more than 200 properties are destroyed and one man dies.

2014 - Australia's combat mission over Iraq turns lethal with bombs taking out Islamic State militants and facilities.

2016 - Family First senator Bob Day announces his resignation from the Senate after his building company collapses into liquidation, leaving more than 200 homeowners in the lurch.

2017 - Raqqa is liberated from Islamic State, ending a four-month battle to take the militants' Syrian capital.

Today's Birthdays:

Mikhail Naimy, Lebanese poet-philosopher (1889-1988); Arthur Miller, US playwright (1915-2005); Rita Hayworth, US actress (1918-1987); Montgomery Clift, US actor (1920-1966); Evel Knievel, US motorcycle daredevil (1938-2007); Les Murray, Australian poet (1938-2017); Drusilla Modjeska, Australian writer (1946-); Margot Kidder, US-Canadian actress (1948-); Rhys Muldoon, Australian actor (1965-); Ziggy Marley, Jamaican singer (1968-); Ernie Els, South African golfer (1969-); Wyclef Jean, Haitian-born rapper and producer (1969-); Eminem, US rapper (1972-): Dami Im, Korean-born Australian singer (1988-).

Thought For Today: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts - Bertrand Russell, British author (1872-1970)

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