On this day - November 17
2011-11-17 07:39
Today is Thursday, November 17, the 321st day of 2011. There are 44 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1511 - England and Spain form defensive alliance against French.
1534 - British Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy, which declares King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.
1558 - Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England after the death of Mary I.
1604 - Sir Walter Raleigh is tried for treason and is imprisoned in England.
1734 - Publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, John Peter Zenger is arrested for libel. He is later acquitted, a decision regarded as a landmark for freedom of expression.
1800 - US Congress holds its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building.
1831 - Venezuela, Ecuador and New Grenada dissolve the Union of Colombia; New Grenada becomes an independent state.
1869 - Suez Canal opens in Egypt, linking Mediterranean and Red Seas.
1937 - Lord Halifax visits Adolf Hitler attempting a peaceful settlement of the majority German Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. This marks the start of Britain's policy of appeasement.
1943 - The Soviet Union's Red Army starts the first withdrawal of the Summer offensive in Kiev where several sections were abandoned in the face of Nazi counterattacks.
1954 - General Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes head of state in Egypt.
1963 - Army in Iraq revolts and sets up new revolutionary government headed by Abdel Salam Arif.
1964 - Britain says it will ban arms exports to South Africa.
1969 - The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the United States and Russia begin in Helsinki, Finland.
1971 - Vemij Thanon Kittikachorn seizes power in Thailand, abolishes Parliament, dismisses cabinet and suspends nation's constitution.
1972 - Former Argentine dictator Juan D Peron returns to his homeland after 17 years of exile.
1973 - US President Richard Nixon tells an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Florida that "people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
1977 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat formally accepts invitation to visit Israel, ignoring uproar among Arab nations and in his own government.
1987 - Iran says Iraqi warplanes attacked unfinished nuclear power plant.
1988 - Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party scores solid victory in parliamentary elections.
1989 - Bloodless anti-Communist revolution is engineered by Vaclav Havel and fellow dissidents in Czechoslovakia; Parliament dismisses Todor Zhivkov as head of state in Bulgaria.
1990 - President Mikhail Gorbachev reorganizes the executive branch of the Soviet government, giving the USSR's 15 constituent republics a larger role in decision-making by the central regime.
1992 - Italian police arrest 75 people in the largest Mafia crackdown since 1984.
1993 - South African leaders endorse a new constitution to end apartheid; the US House of Representatives approves the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico.
1994 - Serbs bombard Bosnian president's office in Sarajevo with missiles and pound "protected area" of Bihac with artillery for third day.
1995 - Algeria's military-installed president, Liamine Zeroual, is proclaimed winner of election boycotted by most major parties.
1997 - Islamic militants kill at least 70 people, including 60 foreign tourists, outside an ancient temple in Luxor, Egypt. The attackers are killed by the police.
1999 - The United Nations urges Rwanda to cooperate with an international tribunal, after the release of genocide suspect Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, a top Hutu official, on procedural grounds.
2001 - Voters in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo in the Serb republic of Yugoslavia cast ballots in the province's first legislative elections since international peacekeepers drove Serb troops out in 1999.
2005 - Rebels burning tires and sporadic explosions block thousands of Sri Lankans from voting in a tight election for a new president to shape peace efforts in the country bloodied by civil war and devastated by the 2004 tsunami.
2006 - Soldiers and police from New Zealand arrive in the Tongan capital to help restore order after mobs demanding democratic reforms destroyed much of Nuku'alofa in unprecedented rioting that leaves at least eight people dead.
2007 - Aid groups in Congo secure the release of more than 200 child soldiers from militia fighters who forcibly recruited them in the east of the country.
2008 - Courts in military-ruled Myanmar sentence at least seven democracy activists to prison, continuing a crackdown that saw about 70 people jailed the previous week.
Today's Birthdays:
Joost van den Vondel, Dutch poet-dramatist (1587-1679); Bernard Montgomery, British field marshal (1887-1976); Rock Hudson, US actor (1925-1985); Martin Scorsese, US film director (1942--); Cyril Ramaphosa, African National Congress secretary general and head of the Constitutional Assembly (1952--); Danny DeVito, US actor (1944--); Lorne Michaels, US writer/producer (1944--); Rachel McAdams, Canadian actress (1978--).
Thought For Today:
The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force - Mary Wollstonecraft, English author (1759-1797).
Sapa-AP