1836: Under the Registration Act, the compulsory registration of births, deaths and marriages was introduced in Britain.
1877: Billy the Kid kills his first man. Though only a teenager at the time, Billy the Kid wounds an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He was the famous outlaw’s first victim.
You will also like...
Just how many men Billy killed is uncertain. Billy himself reportedly once claimed he had killed 21 men—“One for every year of my life.” A reliable contemporary authority estimated the actual total was more like nine: four on his own and five with the aid of others. Other western outlaws of the day were far more deadly. John Wesley Hardin, for example, killed well over 20 men and perhaps as many as 40.
1960: Gabon gains independence from the French
France had occupied Gabon since the latter part of the 1800’s. In 1910, the Equatorial country was added to French Equatorial Africa, a federation of France’s Central African colonies. From 1934 to 1958, French Equatorial Africa was considered by France as an unified colony.
1970: Venera 7 launched by the Soviet Union
Launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to land on another planet, Venus, and send data back to Earth. It entered Venus’ atmosphere in December 1970.
1978: Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman become the first people to complete the world’s First Transatlantic Balloon Flight
The feat was accomplished in a balloon called the Double Eagle II. It took Abruzzo, Anderson, and Newman 6 days to fly from Preque Isle, Maine to a barley field near Paris.
1998: President Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting president to testify before the Office of Independent Counsel as the subject of a grand-jury investigation.
The testimony came after a four-year investigation into Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in several scandals, including accusations of sexual harassment, potentially illegal real-estate deals and suspected “cronyism” involved in the firing of White House travel-agency personnel. The independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, then uncovered an affair between Clinton and a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. When questioned about the affair, Clinton denied it, which led Starr to charge the president with perjury and obstruction of justice, which in turn prompted his testimony on August 17.
2008: At the Olympics in Beijing, American swimmer Michael Phelps helped his team win the 4 × 100-metre medley relay, becoming the first athlete to win eight medals at a single Games.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: August 17
Ibrahim Babangida, 83 years
Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida GCFR GCB is a Nigerian statesman and military dictator was born on 17 August 1941. He ruled as military president of Nigeria from 1985 when he orchestrated a coup d’état against his military and political arch-rival Muhammadu Buhari, until his resignation in 1993[1] as a result of the post-12 June 1993 election which he illegally nullified. He rose through the ranks of the Nigerian Army fighting in the Nigerian Civil War and at various times being involved in almost all the military coups in Nigeria, before advancing to the full-rank of a General and ultimately as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; and as an unelected President and military dictator from 1985 to 1993, ruling for an uninterrupted period of eight years.
Marcus Garvey (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940)
Marcus Garvey—a charismatic Black leader who helped found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a Black-governed nation—was born on 17 August 1887 in Jamaica.
