HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY

Today is Saturday, April 17, the 107th day of 2021. There are 258 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlights in History:

1387: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales characters begin their pilgrimage to Canterbury (according to scholars).

1492: A contract was signed by

Christopher Columbus and a representative of Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.

1895: The Treaty of Shimonoseki ended the first Sino-Japanese War.

1900: Seven high chiefs of American Samoa sign Instrument of Cession.

1905: The US Supreme Court, in Lochner v. New York, struck down, 5-4, a New York State law limiting the number of hours that bakers could be made to work. (This ruling was effectively overturned in 1937 by the high court’s West Coast Hotel Co. v.

Parrish decision.)

1961: Some 1500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro, whose forces crushed the incursion by the third day.

1964: Ford Mustang formally introduced ($2368 base). Jerrie Mock becomes first woman to fly solo around the world.

1969: A jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

1970: Apollo 13 astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert splashed down safely in the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft while en route to the moon.

1972: The Boston Marathon allowed women to compete for the first time; Nina Kuscsik was the first officially recognised women’s champion, with a time of 3:10:26.

1973: Federal Express (later FedEx) began operations as 14 planes carrying 186 packages took off from Memphis International Airport, bound for 25 US cities.

1975: Cambodia’s five-year war ended as the capital Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which instituted brutal, radical policies that claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives until the regime was overthrown in 1979.

1979: Four Royal Ulster Constabulary officers are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army van bomb in Bessbrook, County Armagh; the bomb is believed to be the largest PIRA bomb used up to that point.

1986: At London’s Heathrow Airport, a bomb was discovered in the bag of AnneMarie Murphy, a pregnant Irishwoman about to board an El Al jetliner to Israel; she’d been tricked into carrying the bomb by her Jordanian fiance, Nezar Hindawi.

1991: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 3,000 for the first time, ending the day at 3,004.46, up 17.58.

1993: A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers were acquitted. Turkish President Turgut Ozal died at age 66.

2009: Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark becomes the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the first woman to lead the organisation.

2013: Same-sex marriage is legalised in New Zealand. Fifteen people were killed when a fertiliser plant exploded in West, Texas. Sports returned to Boston two days after the deadly Marathon bombing as the Buffalo Sabres defeated the Bruins in a 3-2 shootout (players on both teams wore “Boston Strong” decals on their helmets)

Ten years ago: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Japan, where she expressed confidence the country would fully recover from its tsunami and nuclear disasters, Actor Michael Sarrazin, 70, died in Montreal.

Five years ago: Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who repeatedly argued that the push against her was a “coup”. (Rousseff was removed the following August.) Pennsylvania became the 24th state to legalise a comprehensive medical marijuana programme as Gov Tom Wolf signed the bill into law. Actor Doris Roberts, who played the tart-tongued, endlessly meddling mother on CBS Everybody Loves Raymond, died at age 90.

One year ago: President Donald Trump urged supporters to “LIBERATE” three states led by Democratic governors, apparently encouraging protests against stay-at-home mandates aimed at stopping the coronavirus. Washington Democratic Gov Jay Inslee accused Trump of “fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies.” Governors of both parties indicated that they would be cautious in returning to normal; some warned that they couldn’t do it without help from Washington to expand testing. Singer Taylor Swift canceled all of her performances and appearances for the rest of the year.