Today in History: 17 June
1462 – Vlad III the Impaler (Dracula) attempts to assassinate Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in a night attack at Târgoviște, its failure forces him to retreat from Wallachia
1535 – Trial of English Catholic Cardinal John Fischer for treason at Westminster Hall – found guilty and later hanged
1579 – English navigator Francis Drake lands on the coast of California at Drakes Bay, names it “New Albion”
1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, then spends more than 20 years building her tomb, the Taj Mahal
1755 – Future explorer James Cook joins the Royal Navy as an able-bodied seaman at Wapping, East London
1788 – After a lengthy stay in Europe, future US President John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams return to Boston
1837 – Charles Goodyear obtains his first rubber patent
1885 – Statue of Liberty arrives in NYC aboard French ship ‘Isere’
1928 – Amelia Earhart leaves Newfoundland to become 1st woman (passenger) to fly Atlantic
1939 – Last public guillotining in France. Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the prison Saint-Pierre
1950 – 1st kidney transplant (Chicago)
1988 – Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.0
1988 – Soyuz TM-5 launches
1996 – Howard Stern Radio Show premiers in Syracuse, New York on WAQX 95.7 FM
2021 – China launches its Shenzhou-12 spacecraft with three astronauts arriving at its new space station Tiangong six and a half hours later
Download Complete! –
1239 – Edward 1, King of England
1682 – Charles XII, King of Sweden
1871 – James Weldon Johnson, American Harlem Renaissance poet, lyricist, civil rights activist, and leader of the NAACP
1882 – Harold Gillies, New Zealand born father of modern plastic surgery
1943 – Barry Manilow, American pop singer and piano player
1965 – Dan Jansen, American speed skater
1980 – Venus Williams, American tennis star
1987 – Kendrick Lamar, American Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning hip hop singer-songwriter
Unrecoverable Error –
1719 – Joseph Addison, English essayist, playwright, poet, and Whig politician
1947 – Maxwell Perkins, American editor and publisher for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe
2012 – Rodney King, African American motorist beaten by Los Angeles police officers
The Funnies:
Quote of the Day
YouTube Clip of the Day
Comic of the Day
Mouseover: Sure, this exoplanet we discovered may seem hostile to life, but our calculations suggest it’s actually in the accretion disc’s habitable zone.
Explain XKCD 3103: Exoplanet System - explain xkcd
Image Credit: XKCD
Inspirobot Sometimes Controversial Inspirational Quote of the Day:
In case you missed it, you can go take a look at yesterday’s Blooming Spark! by @steve6343 over here
