OK, so on this day in 1903 the Wright brothers did the first successful manned, self-propelled airplane flights.
But what else happened on December 17 down through the years?
1777 — France recognized American independence.
1843 — Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published.
1862 — General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11 expelling Jews from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi.
1944 — Japanese-Americans are released from detention camps.
1947 — The Arab League announced it will use force to resist partition of Palestine.
1948 — “Operation Magic Carpet” begn to take Yemenite Jews to Israel.
1969 — The US Air Force closed its Project “Blue Book” by concluding that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.
1992 — US President H. W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Is that all? Nope. There were nuclear tests hither and yon. And other stuff, including this strange one:
1967 — Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt disappeared while swimming near Portsea, Victoria, and was presumed drowned.
Do your own search if you’re that interested in what else happened on December 17. 🙂