TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017 On this day in history:

1792 - The French Republic was proclaimed.

1831 - The first drawing of a numbat is made, following the first recorded sighting. 1862 - US President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It stated that all slaves held within rebel states would be free as of January 1, 1863. 1903 - Italo Marchiony was granted a patent for the ice cream cone.

1914 - Three British cruisers were sunk by one German submarine in the North Sea. 1,400 British sailors were killed. This event alerted the British to the effectiveness of the submarine.

1927 - In Chicago, IL, Gene Tunney successfully defended his heavyweight boxing title against Jack Dempsey in the famous “long-count” fight. 1949 - The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb successfully.

1955 - Commercial television began in Great Britain. The rules said that only six minutes of ads were allowed each hour and there was no Sunday morning TV permitted. 1980 - A border conflict between Iran and Iraq developed into a full-scale war. 1988 - Canada’s government apologised for the internment of Japanese-Canadian’s during the Second World war. They also promised compensation. 1990 - Saudi Arabia expelled most of the Yememin and Jordanian envoys in Riyadh. The Saudi accusations were unspecific.

1991 - An article in the London newspaper “The Mail” revealed that John Cairncross admitted to being the “fifth man” in the Soviet Union’s British spy ring. 1992 - The UN General Assembly expelled Yugoslavia for its role in the war between Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1995 - An E-3B AWACS crashes outside Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska after multiple bird strikes to two of the four engines soon after takeoff; all 24 on board are killed. 1995 - Nagerkovil school bombing, is carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force in which at least 34 die, most of them ethnic Tamil schoolchildren. 2013 - At least 75 people are killed in a suicide bombing at a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan.