NOW & THEN
17 SEPTEMBER
1394: Jews were expelled from France by order of King Charles VI.
1665: Great bubonic plague broke out in London.
1683: Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to report the existence of bacteria.
1745: Prince Charles Edward Stuart entered Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh.
1787: Thirty-nine delegates, under the chairmanship of George Washington, approved the constitution of the USA.
1835: Charles Darwin landed on Chatham in the Galapagos archipelago.
1871: The seven-mile Mont Cenis railway tunnel opened in Switzerland.
1908: Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge of the United States Army Signal Corps was killed in a crash with Orville Wright in Fort Meyer, Virginia, to become the first aeroplane fatality.
1916: The “Red Baron” (Manfred von Richthofen) won his first aerial battle near Cambrai, France during World War I.
1929: British troops began withdrawal from occupied Germany.
1931: Long-playing records were first introduced, with a demonstration held at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York City.
1934: USSR joined the League of Nations, despite the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal voting against their inclusion.
1939: The USSR invaded Poland.
1949: Fire destroyed Noronic, largest passenger steamer on Great Lakes, at Toronto pier, killing more than 130 people.
1954: Boxer Rocky Marciano knocked out Ezzard Charles in the eighth round at Yankee Stadium, New York, to retain his world heavyweight title.
1954: The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, was published by Faber & Faber in London.
1959: Golfer Jack Nicklaus won the US Amateur Championship.
1961: More than 800 arrested at Ban the Bomb demonstration in London, including Canon Collins, John Osborne, George Melly and Vanessa Redgrave.
1964: US disclosed development of two weapons systems capable of intercepting and destroying armed satellites circling the Earth.
1978: Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat and Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin concluded meeting at Camp David in United States with signing of frame
work for Middle East peace.
1981: Twelve divers began work to recover 431 gold ingots, valued at £40 million, from HMS Edinburgh, which sank in Barents Sea in 1942.
1990: Britain ordered the expulsion of two Iraqi military attaches and six support staff in solidarity with EEC countries whose embassies in Kuwait were ransacked by Iraqi troops.
2001: Wall Street suffered its biggest one-day fall – 750 points – amid fears the 9/11 attacks could cause a global recession.
2007: The government took the unprecedented step of guaranteeing all deposits in Northern Rock after four days of turmoil in which savers withdrew £2 billion from the bank.
2008: Lloyds TSB agreed a £12 billion takeover deal of Halifax Bank of Scotland after HBOS suffered a run on its shares.