June 17
1462 –
Vlad The Impaler attempts to assassinate
Mehmed II (The Night Attack) forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.
1579 –
Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls
Nova Albion (modern California) for England.
1631 –
Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband,
Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, spends the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the
Taj Mahal.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the
Battle of Bunker Hill.
1876 – American Indian Wars:
Battle of the Rosebud: One thousand five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne led by
Crazy Horse beat back
General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
1877 – American Indian Wars:
Battle of White Bird Canyon: The Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.
1885 – The
Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.
1939 – Last public guillotining in France:
Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.
1948 – A Douglas DC-6 carrying
United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
1954 - Guitarist Danny Cedrone (guitar work on "
Rock Around The Clock") falls down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and dying instantly.
1965 -
The Kinks and
The Moody Blues made their US concert debut at the
Academy of Music in New York City.
1972 –
Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.
1973 -
Dolly Parton recorded '
I Will Always Love You' in
RCA's Studio "B" in Nashville, Tennessee.
1978 -
Andy Gibb became the first solo artist in the history of the US charts to have his first three releases reach No.1, when '
Shadow Dancing' hit the top of the chart. Spending seven weeks at No.1 it became the best selling single in the US in 1978.
1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the
dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct.
1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is
arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
2012 -
Bruce Springsteen played his longest show when he turned in a three-hour-and-48-minute, 32-song, set at the
Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid.
2015 – Nine people are killed in a
mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Births
1704 – John Kay (no, not that one, this one invented the
flying shuttle used in weaving); 1882 – Igor Stravinsky; 1898 – M. C. Escher; 1903 – Ruth Graves Wakefield (created the
chocolate chip cookie); 1904 – Ralph Bellamy; 1910 – Red Foley; 1919 – Beryl Reid; 1943 – Newt Gingrich, Barry Manilow, Burt Rutan; 1945 – Tommy Franks; 1947 – Gregg Rolie, Paul Young; 1951 – Joe Piscopo; 1958 – Jello Biafra; 1960 – Thomas Haden Church; 1963 – Greg Kinnear; 1966 – Jason Patric; 1970 – Will Forte; 1980 – Venus Williams; 1987 – Kendrick Lamar
Deaths
1961 – Jeff Chandler; 1986 – Kate Smith; 2008 – Cyd Charisse; 2012 – Rodney King