01010817 This Day In History, August 17

986: A Byzantine army was destroyed in the pass of Trajan's Gate by the Bulgarians under the Comitopuli Samuel and Aron. The Byzantine emperor Basil II narrowly escaped.

1424: The English fought the Scots and French at the Battle of Verneuil during the Hundred Years War.

1585: Spanish forces, led by Duke of Parma, took Antwerp after a 14-month siege in the Dutch War of Liberation.

1590: John White, the leader of 117 colonists sent in 1587 to Roanoke Island (North Carolina) to establish a colony, returned from a trip to England to find the settlement deserted. No trace of the settlers is ever found (see also Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy).

1743: The Peace of Abo was signed, ending the Russo-Swedish War of 1741-43.

1812: Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeated the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow.

1833: The first steam ship to cross the Atlantic entirely on its own power, the Canadian ship Royal William, began its journey from Nova Scotia to The Isle of Wight.

1915: A Category 4 hurricane hit Galveston, Texas with winds at 217 km/hr (135 mph).

1915: Leo Frank, a Texas-born U.S. Jew, was lynched for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl in Marietta, Georgia after the State Governor, believing that Frank's conviction was based more on racist anti-Semitism than factual evidence, commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment. Leading the frenzied lynch mob (the girl's actual murderer was very likely among those doing the lynching) were prominent "White Christian" citizens of the town, including a former Governor, the son of a Senator, a Methodist Minister, a State Legislator, and a former State Superior Court Judge. Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986.

1918: Russian Bolshevik revolutionary leader Moisei Uritsky was assassinated.

1943: During the Second World War, the U.S. Eighth Air Force lost 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission.

1945: Indonesia claimed independence from the Netherlands with the setting up the Provisional Indonesian Republican Government.

1962: Peter Fechter, 18, was shot by East German guards as he attempted to flee across the Berlin Wall. Left to bleed to death, his case was the most notorious in the history of the Wall. In July 1996, two former guards were charged with manslaughter.

1969: A Category 5 Hurricane, named Camille, struck the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage.

1969: Dr. Philip Blaiberg died in South Africa, 19 months and 15 days after receiving a heart transplant, a survival record at the time.

1970: The Russian Venera 7 was launched. It become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet - Venus.

1977: The Soviet icebreaker Arktika became the first ship to reach the North Pole.

1987: Nazi war criminal Rudolph Hess committed suicide by hanging with a lamp cord, at age 93, after 46 years in Spandau Prison. He had been the only inmate of the prison for the last 20 years of his life.

1998: U.S. President Bill Clinton testified before Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury regarding Clinton's sexual adventures with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. Clinton thereby became the first U.S. President to testify under oath (he had previously denied any adultery and fornication with the young assistant) before a grand jury.

1999: A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Izmit, Turkey; over 17,000 people were killed and 44,000 were injured.

2005: Over 500 terrorist bombs were detonated 300 locations across Bangladesh.