Today is Sunday, Jan. 17, the 17th day of 2016. There are 349 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1595 – France’s King Henry IV declares war on Spain.
1759 – Holy Roman Empire declares war on Prussia.
1852 – Sand River Convention establishes South African Republic of Transvaal.
1871 – Determined to improve public transportation in San Francisco, wire manufacturer Andrew Hallidie patents the cable car.
1893 – Hawaii’s monarchy is overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters force Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
1945 – Soviet troops and Polish forces liberate Warsaw, more than five years after it fell to Nazi Germany; Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews, disappears in Hungary while in Soviet custody
1959 – Federal State of Mali is formed by Union of Republics of Senegal and French Sudan.
1961 – In his farewell address, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower warns against the rise of “the military-industrial complex.”
1977 – Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, 36, is shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.
1990 – The Colombian Medellin cartel says it has lost the drug war and offers skeptical U.S. and Colombian authorities an end to terror in exchange for a pardon.
1993 – The United States unleashes a shower of Tomahawk cruise missiles against a nuclear fabricating plant 13 kilometers (8 miles) from Baghdad, delivering the point that Iraq must comply with U.N. resolutions.
1994 – An earthquake devastates suburbs in the San Fernando Valley, California, killing 61 people and injuring over 10,000.
1995 – Japan’s deadliest earthquake in 70 years slams Kobe and other western cities, killing more than 5,000 people.
1996 – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of Egypt’s main Muslim radical faction, is sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. court for plotting to blow up the United Nations and other New York-area landmarks.
1997 – In Dublin, with little fanfare, a court grants the first divorce in Ireland’s history.
2000 – A Berlin court convicts Johannes Weinrich of murder and attempted murder and sentences him to life in prison for the 1983 terrorist bombing of a French cultural center in then-West Berlin, which killed one person and injured 23.
2004 – About 10,000 Muslim women march through Paris to protest against France’s plan to ban head coverings from public schools.
2005 – Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas orders his security forces to prevent attacks against Israel and investigate the most recent deadly shooting of Israelis.
2006 – In his first statement since becoming Israel’s acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert says he wants to resume final peace talks with the Palestinians and take harsh action against Israeli squatters in the West Bank.
2007 – Jainal Antel Sali Jr., a top leader of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf rebel group in the Philippines who was accused of kidnapping three Americans in 2001 and of masterminding one of Southeast Asia’s worst terror attacks three years later, is killed by Filipino army forces.
2012 – Scientists confirm that 15 pounds (7 kilograms) of rock collected recently in Morocco fell to Earth from Mars during a meteorite shower.
2013 – Algerian special forces launch a rescue operation at a natural gas plant in the Sahara desert and free foreign hostages held by al-Qaida-linked militants, but estimates for the number of dead vary widely.
2014 – President Yoweri Museveni refuses to sign a Ugandan bill that would criminalize homosexuality, saying they should instead be rehabilitated.
2015 – Indonesia brushes aside last-minute appeals by foreign leaders by executing by firing squad six people, including five foreigners, convicted of drug trafficking.
Today’s Birthdays:
Leonhard Fuchs, German physician (1501-1566); Benjamin Franklin, U.S. statesman and scientist (1706-1790); Anton Chekhov, Russian dramatist (1860-1904); Alphonse Capone, U.S. gangster (1899-1947); Betty White, U.S. actress, (1922–); James Earl Jones, U.S. actor (1931–); Muhammad Ali, U.S. boxer (1947–); Jim Carrey, Canadian actor (1962–).
Thought For Today:
I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like to be taught — Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965).
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