This Day in History – September 17
Today is the 260th day of 2015. There are 105 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2004: Mexico’s President Vincente Fox and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sign a free trade agreement to ease Mexico’s reliance on the US while encouraging Japan to move factories there.
OTHER EVENTS
1595: Pope Clement VII absolves Henry VI, a former Protestant, and recognises him as King of France.
1631: Swedish-Saxon army under Gustav II Adolf of Sweden destroys the Catholic army at Breitenfeld, Germany, marking the rise of Sweden as a major power.
1665: Bubonic plague breaks out in London.
1730: Ahmet XII is deposed, and is succeeded by Mahmoud I in Turkey.
1787: U.S. Constitution is signed by a majority of delegates attending the constitutional convention in Philadelphia.
1862: Union forces fight a Confederate invasion in Maryland in the American Civil War Battle of Antietam. There were 23,100 killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in US military history.
1900: Proclamation of Commonwealth of Australia as Federal Union of the Six Colonies.
1935: Manuel Quezon is elected first president of the Philippine Commonwealth.
1939: The Soviet Union invades Poland, more than two weeks after Nazi Germany launched its assault.
1944: The Battle of Arnhem begins with an Allied airborne landing in the Netherlands.
1948: Sweden’s Count Folke Bernadotte, United Nations mediator in Arab-Israeli conflict over Palestine, is slain near Jerusalem by Jewish terrorists.
1957: Troops led by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, Thai Army Commander in Chief, seize control of the Government of Thailand and oust Premier Pibul Songgram in a bloodless coup.
1964: United States discloses development of two weapons systems capable of intercepting and destroying armed satellites circling the earth.
1967: A riot during a soccer game in Turkey kills 42 people and injures 600 others.
1970: Open warfare erupts in Jordan between King Hussein’s army and Palestinian guerrillas, precipitating world crisis.
1978: Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign an agreement for Middle East peace at Camp David, United States.
1980: Exiled Nicaraguan leader Anastasio Somoza is assassinated in an explosion that wrecks his car in Asuncion, Paraguay.
1993: The body of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the premier of Poland’s government-in-exile and commander of the Polish free forces during World War II, is reburied in Krakow. He died in an air crash in Gibraltar in 1943.
1996: US President Bill Clinton dispatches 3,500 Army soldiers to Kuwait and warns Iraq of new attacks should it threaten neighbouring countries or US forces.
2003: Colombian officials sign a non-extradition pact covering US citizens sought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands.
2008: An assault on the US Embassy in San’a, Yemen, kills 19 people, including an American woman and six militants.
2009: President Barack Obama abruptly cancels a long-planned missile shield for Eastern Europe, replacing a Bush-era project that was bitterly opposed by Russia with a plan he contends will better defend against a growing threat of Iranian missiles.
2012: Iran’s nuclear chief says that “terrorists and saboteurs” might have infiltrated the International Atomic Energy Agency in an effort to derail his nation’s atomic program in Tehran’s harshest attack on the integrity of the UN agency that is investigating allegations that Iran is striving to make nuclear arms.
2013: Russia insists that a UN Security Council resolution governing Syria’s handling of its chemical weapons does not allow the use of force but suggests that could change if Damascus reneges on the deal to give up its stockpile.
2014: Iraq’s new prime minister rules out stationing US ground troops in his country, chiding the international community for inaction in Syria and lamenting the “puzzling” exclusion of Iran from the coalition being assembled to fight Iran.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Marie-Jean Caritat, French philosopher (1743-1794); Sir Francis Chichester, British sailor (1901-1972); Hank Williams, US musician (1923-1953); Anne Bancroft, US actress (1931-2005); Ken Kesey, US author (1935-2001); John Ritter, US actor (1948-2003); Baz Luhrmann, Australian director (1962- )
— AP
