On This Day - February 17th

On this day in the years 1568 of the common era (CE ) the Treaty of Adrianople is enacted when representatives of the holy-Roman emperor, Maximilian II and the Ottoman sultan, Selim II agree to a peace plan that ends the war between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman Empire; Maximilian agrees to provide a cash "present" and ruling authority is granted to the Ottomans in Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia thereby making moot the valiant defense his homeland that Vladimir Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula waged against the Ottoman forces a century earlier.

On this day in the year 1600 CE Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno is convicted of heresy by the Roman Inquisition and burned alive in an egregious act of human sacrifice, at Campo de' Fiori in Rome; one hundred and seventy-six years later the first volume of Edward Gibbon's seminal work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published

On this day in 1818 CE baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patents the "draisine," an early example of a bicycle; fifty eight years later Sardines first canned by Julius Wolff in Eastport, Maine. Two years after that the first telephone exchange in San Francisco, California opens with eighteen phones

In 1864 CE the Confederate submarine C.S.S., H.L. Hunley sinks the Union ship USS Housatonic at Charleston, South Carolina in the world's first successful submarine attack; the crews of both vessels were killed; thirty-three years later the National Organization of Mothers is formed in American by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, later to become the Parent Teacher Association.

In 1904 CE, Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly premieres at La Scala in Milan, Italy; nine years later, a show at the New York Armory introduces Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp to the American public. Twenty years after that, in 1933 CE the first issue of American news magazine Newsweek is published; three years later The Phantom, a cartoon strip by Lee Falk makes his first appearance in comics as the world's first superhero. Two years after that, 1938 CE the first public experimental demonstration of Baird color TV occurs in London, England; nine years later the Voice of America begins broadcasting to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

In 1943 CE the New York Yankee’s Joe DiMaggio enlists in the US army; three years later the Humanistic Covenant forms in Amsterdam. One year after that in 1947 CE, Dutch Roman Catholic bishops publish a statement against the godlessness of communism; twenty-seven years later Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House with a stolen helicopter.

In 1977 CE the Kalakuta Republic, a commune in Lagos, Nigeria belonging to musician and activist Fela Kuti, father of the afro-beats, is burnt to the ground by members of the Nigerian army. His mother is thrown out of a window and later dies from her injuries.

In 1983 CE the United States performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site; three years later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan.

In 1996 CE, Garry Kasparov defeats chess-playing computer Deep Blue 4-2.

In 2014 CE The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon premieres on NBC; two years later Channing Dungey becomes the new President of ABC Entertainment Group; he is the first African-American to lead a major US broadcast network.

In 2016 CE a study showing the oldest known case of sexual reproduction between homo sapiens and neanderthals sex is published by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany when a neanderthal woman's remains from the Altai Mountains, c. 50,000 years before the common era (BCE) show traces of human DNA.