Aug. 17
Today in history
Today is Aug. 17. On this date in:
1590: John White and his sailors anchored off Roanoke Island, off what is now North Carolina, to see whether the English colonists he had left there were still alive. The following day they found only the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree without the agreed-upon distress signal. No one has ever unraveled the mystery; a popular theory is that the colonists joined Indigenous people on Croatoan Island.
1790: Moses Seixas, warden of Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, presented an address welcoming President George Washington to the city. “Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens,” Seixas wrote, his people were grateful for “a Government, which to bigotry
gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” In response, Washington affirmed the importance of religious freedom and confirmed that Jewish Americans were full citizens.
1807: The first steamboat carrying paying passengers took its first journey, from New York City to Albany, New York. Designed by American engineer Robert Fulton, the Clermont made the trip north in 32 hours.
1859: The U.S. Postal Service debuted air mail – by balloon. The craft took off in Lafayette, Indiana, bearing mail for New York City. A lack of wind meant the balloon made it only 30 miles, and the mailbag made the rest of the trip by train.
1862: Deprived of land and provisions promised by the U.S. government, members of the Dakota Tribe raided a Minnesota farm for eggs, killing five settlers. Anticipating retaliation, the tribe continued to attack. The federal government quelled the uprising in September. More than 500 White people and about 190 Dakotans died.
1877: Already known as a delinquent and thief, Billy the Kid shot an Arizona blacksmith in a fight over a poker game. The man died the next day – the Kid’s first known victim.
1945: George Orwell published “Animal Farm,” declaring, “all animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.” The satire of a Communist utopia became a classic.
1962: East German guards shot a young man trying to escape across the Berlin Wall and left him to die. Peter Fechter, 18, became a symbol of Iron Curtain tyranny and the Cold War.
1978: The first transatlantic balloon flight was successfully completed, long after the modality’s heyday. Three New Mexico balloonists flew Double Eagle II roughly 3,100 miles from Maine to France in 137 hours, 6 minutes.
1979: “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” opened in the United States. Funded by Beatle George Harrison’s HandMade Films, the movie took an irreverent take on the Gospels.
1982: Federal district Judge Jerry Buchmeyer ruled that Texas’ sodomy law violated constitutional rights to privacy and due process. The law prohibited consensual sex between gay people. The state appealed the decision, then withdrew its appeal.
1987: Rudolf Hess, the last surviving member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, was found hanged in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, an apparent suicide. Hess had been the only prisoner at Spandau since 1966.
1998: President Bill Clinton became the first U.S. sitting president to testify before a grand jury as the subject of an investigation. Afterward, he told the American public that his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky had been “not appropriate.”
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 17
