TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SATURDAY, SEPT. 16, the 259th day of 2017. There are 106 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY: On this date in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act.
In 1857, the song “Jingle Bells” by James Pierpont was copyrighted under its original title, “One Horse Open Sleigh.” The song was written for Thanksgiving.
In 1893, more than 100,000 settlers swarmed onto a section of land in Oklahoma known as the “Cherokee Strip.”
In 1982, the massacre of between 1,200 and 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children at the hands of Israeli-allied Christian Phalange militiamen, began in west Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
In 1987, two dozen countries signed the Montreal Protocol, a treaty designed to save the Earth’s ozone layer by calling on nations to reduce emissions of harmful chemicals by the year 2000.
In 1994, a federal jury in Anchorage, Alaska, ordered Exxon Corp. to pay $5 billion in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The U.S Supreme Court later reduced that amount to $507.5 million. Two astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery went on the first untethered spacewalk in 10 years.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actress Janis Paige is 95. Actor George Chakiris is 85. Bluesman Billy Boy Arnold is 82. Rhythm-and-blues singer Betty Kelley (Martha & the Vandellas) is 73. Actor Ed Begley Jr. is 68. Country singer David Bellamy (The Bellamy Brothers) is 67. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount is 62. Actor Mickey Rourke and magician David Copperfield are 61. Country singer-songwriter Terry McBride, actress Jennifer Tilly and retired MLB All-Star pitcher Orel Hershiser are 59. Baseball Hall-ofFamer Tim Raines is 58. Actress Jayne Brook is 57. Singer Richard Marx is 54. Comedian Molly Shannon is 53. Singer Marc Anthony is 49. Comedian-actress Amy Poehler is 46. Actor Michael Mosley is 39. Actress Alexis Bledel is 36. Actress Sabrina Bryan is 33. Actress Madeline Zima is 32. Actor Ian Harding and actress Kyla Pratt are 31. Actress-dancer Bailey Buntain is 28. Rock singer-musician Nick Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 25.