TODAY IN WORLD HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, Oct. 17, the 290th day of 2017. There are 75 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History On Oct. 17, 1931, mobster Al Capone was convicted in Chicago of income tax evasion. (Sentenced to 11 years in prison, Capone was released in 1939.)
On this date • In 1610, French King Louis XIII, age nine, was crowned at Reims, five months after the assassination of his father, Henry IV.
• In 1777, British forces under Gen. John Burgoyne surrendered to American troops in Saratoga, N.Y., in a turning point of the Revolutionary War.
• In 1807, Britain declared it would continue to reclaim British-born sailors from American ships and ports regardless of whether they held U.S. citizenship.
• In 1919, Radio Corp. of America was chartered.
In 1933, Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
• In 1941, the U.S. destroyer Kearny was damaged by a German torpedo off the coast of Iceland; 11 people died.
• In 1957, the movie “Jailhouse Rock,” starring Elvis Presley, had its world premiere in Memphis, Tn.
• In 1967, Puyi, the last emperor of China, died in Beijing at age 61.
• In 1979, Mother Teresa of India was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• In 1987, first lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
• In 1989, an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale struck Northern California, killing 63 people and causing $6 billion worth of damage.
• In 1992, Japanese exchange student Yoshi Hattori was fatally shot by Rodney Peairs in Baton Rouge, La., after Hattori and his American host mistakenly knocked on Peairs’ door while looking for a Halloween party. (Peairs was acquitted of manslaughter, but was ordered in a civil trial to pay more than $650,000 to Hattori’s family.)
Ten years ago President George W. Bush, raising Beijing’s ire, presented the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal and urged Chinese leaders to welcome the monk to Beijing. Comedian Joey Bishop, the last of Sinatra’s “Rat Pack,” died in Newport Beach at age 89. Singer Teresa Brewer died in New Rochelle, N.Y., at age 76.
Five years ago Federal authorities in New York said a Bangladeshi student had been arrested in an FBI sting after he tried to detonate a phony 1,000-pound truck bomb outside the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan. (Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was sentenced to 30 years in prison.) The St. Louis Cardinals took a 2-1 lead in the National League Championship Series by beating San Francisco 3-1 in a game delayed 31⁄2 hours by rain at Busch Stadium.
One year ago A long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city Mosul from the Islamic State group began with a volley of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and heavy artillery bombardments on a cluster of villages east of the militant-held city. Orbital ATK’s unmanned Antares rocket blasted off from Wallops Island in Virginia on a supply mission to the International Space Station; it was the first flight of an Antares since a launch explosion in 2014.