Today in history, Nov 17th!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on November 17th!

375	Enraged by the insolence of barbarian envoys, Valentinian, the Emperor of the West, dies of apoplexy in Pannonia in Central Europe.
1558	Queen Elizabeth ascends to the throne of England, and the Church of England is re-established.
1842	A grim abolitionist meeting is held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the imprisonment of a mulatto named George Latimer, one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended in Massachusetts.
1862	Union General Ambrose Burnside marches north out of Washington, D.C., to begin the Fredericksburg campaign.
1869	The Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
1877	Russia launches a surprise night attack that overruns Turkish forces at Kars, Armenia.
1885	The Serbian Army, with Russian support, invades Bulgaria.
1903	Vladimir Lenin’s efforts to impose his own radical views on the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits the party into two factions, the Bolsheviks, who support Lenin, and the Mensheviks.
1913	The first ship sails through the Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
1918	Influenza deaths reported in the United States have far exceeded World War I casualties.
1918	German troops evacuate Brussels.
1931	Charles Lindbergh inaugurates Pan Am service from Cuba to South America in the Sikorsky flying boat American Clipper.
1934	Lyndon B. Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as “Lady Bird.”
1941	German Luftwaffe general and World War I fighter-ace Ernst Udet commits suicide. The Nazi government tells the public that he died in a flying accident.
1951	Britain reports development of the world’s first nuclear-powered heating system.
1965	The NVA ambushes American troops of the 7th Cavalry at Landing Zone Albany in the Ia Drang Valley, almost wiping them out.
1967	The American Surveyor 6 makes a six-second flight on the moon, the first liftoff on the lunar surface.
1968	NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a game to air a TV special, “Heidi,” on schedule.
1970	Soviet unmanned Luna 17 touches down on the moon.
1970	The Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon.
1973	President Richard M. Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Fla., “I’m not a crook.”
1980	WHHM Television in Washington, D.C., becomes the first African-American public-broadcasting television station.
1986	Renault President Georges Besse is shot to death by leftists of the Direct Action Group in Paris.
1997	Six militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt, killing 62 people, most of them foreign tourists. The attackers were killed by police.
2003	Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as governor of California.
2008	The vampire romance movie “Twilight” premiered in Los Angeles.
2010	A hand-count of votes affirmed the re-election of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the first Senate candidate in over 50 years to win a write-in campaign.
2010	The first Guantanamo detainee to face civilian trial, Ahmed Ghailani, was convicted by federal jury in New York on one charge of conspiracy related to 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Ghailani’s native Tanzania.

Today’s historical facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, HistoryOrb.com, and On This Day blogs from my blogroll.

http://hankeringforhistory.com/2012/11/17/today-in-history-nov-17th/