17 OCTOBER

733 Battle at Tours (Poitiers): Charles Martel's Frankish and Burgundian forces beat those of al-Andalus under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi halting Islamic influence (date disputed)

1091 A tornado struck London. It was Britain's earliest reported tornado. The wooden London Bridge was demolished, and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London was badly damaged. Other churches in the area were demolished, as were over 600, mostly wooden, houses.

1346 At the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, the Scots were routed and King David II of Scotland was captured by Edward III of England and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.

1651 Defeated by Oliver Cromwell at Worcester, Charles II of England fled to France.

1727 The birth of John Wilkes, English political agitator and advocate of press freedom who, despite being elected to Parliament four times, was not allowed to take his seat. Eventually, working, and middle-class support secured him his rightful entry to Parliament where he fought for reforms and religious tolerance.

1771 Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, age 15.

1855 A steel-making process was patented, by Englishman Sir Harry Bessemer.

1860 The world's first professional golf tournament was held, at Prestwick in Scotland.

1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie)

1907 Guglielmo Marconi's company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland

1914 German U-boats raided Scapa Flow, the main base of the British Grand Fleet, off the north coast of Scotland in the Orkney Islands.

1919 RCA is incorporated as the Radio Corporation of America.


1933 Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.

1936 Newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook promised King Edward VIII that he would arrange for the British press to remain silent on the subject of his relationship with American divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson.

1956 Queen Elizabeth II opened Calder Hall in Cumbria - Britain's first large scale atomic energy station.

1956 Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer play a famous chess game called The Game of the Century. Fischer beat Byrne and wins a Brilliancy prize.

1973 The start of a major world oil crisis when oil producing Arab states increased prices by 70 per cent and cut production in protest at US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

1978 Public pressure led ministers to reduce the number of grey seals to be culled in Scotland.

1979 Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1980 The Queen made history by becoming the first British monarch to make a state visit to the Vatican, when she met Pope John Paul II.

1985 The House of Lords, in the Gillick case, permitted doctors to prescribe oral contraceptives to girls aged under 16 without parental consent.

1991 Four independent television companies: TV-am, Thames, TVS and TSW lost their licences to broadcast following a 'sealed bid' system of awarding the franchises by the Independent Television Commission.

1996 England international footballer Paul Gascoigne was accused of beating up his wife Sheryl at a hotel in Scotland.

2000 Four people were killed when a high speed passenger train derailed in Hatfield, just north of London. The accident was a defining moment in the subsequent collapse of Railtrack.

2001 Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi becomes the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack.

2012 Colin Farmer, aged 61 and a blind stroke victim said that he thought he was going to die when he was shot in the back in Chorley town centre with a 50,000-volt Taser stun gun fired by a police officer who mistook his white stick for a Samurai sword.

Famous Birthday's

Arthur Miller
(1915 - 2005)

Evel Knievel
(1938 - 2007)

Eminem
45th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Agrippina the Elder
( - 33)

Frederic Chopin
(1810 - 1849)

Laura Secord
(1775 - 1868)

Famous Weddings

1469 Crown prince Fernando of Aragon marries Princess Isabella of Castile

1707 German composer Johann S Bach marries for the 1st time his cousin Maria Barbara Bach

1749 US revolutionary Samuel Adams (27) weds Elizabeth Checkley

1826 Historian Thomas Carlyle (30) weds Jane Welsh (25)

1916 Cartoonist Rube Goldberg (33) weds Irma Seeman