01011017 This Day In History, October 17

456: Western Roman emperor Avitus was forced by Ricimer (a Roman general of German birth; see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation) to abdicate and to become bishop of Placentia.

1244: The Sixth Crusade ended when the army of Franks was defeated by the Egyptians at Gaza (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy).

1346: David II of Scotland, in attempting a military diversion on behalf of Philip VI to relieve the siege of Calais, was wounded and captured by Edward III.

1448: The Second Battle of Kosovo. The Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi was defeated by Ottoman forces led by Sultan Murad II.

1456: The University of Greifswald was established, making it the second-oldest university in northern Europe.

1483: Pope Sixtus IV began the Spanish Inquisition, placing it under joint direction of the Church and state. Tomas de Torquemada, 63, was appointed Grand Inquisitor in charge of removing Jews and Muslims from Spain.

1529: King Henry VIII of England removed Thomas Wolsey from office for failing to secure an annulment of his marriage.

1797: The Treaty of Campo Formio, a peace accord between France and Austria, was signed.

1868: Laura Secord died at age 93. A Canadian heroine of the War of 1812, she warned British forces of a major impending U.S. attack on southern Ontario (that she learned about when they invaded her home where she was tending to her wounded husband - she then ran 20 miles overnight through woods and swamp to report their presence) that led to the British victory at the Battle of Beaver Dams on June 24 1813. 500 U.S. invaders, including their wounded commander, were taken prisoner.

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

1910: The first battleship of the Royal Canadian Navy was commissioned at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1933: German-born Albert Einstein arrived in the U.S. as a Jewish refugee from the growing Nazi threat in Europe.

1941: A German submarine torpedoed the U.S. destroyer Kearney off the coast of Iceland, killing 11 of the crew.

1956: Queen Elizabeth officially opened the Britain's first nuclear power station at Calder Hall in Cumbria. Calder Hall was the first nuclear station to supply an appreciable amount of power into a civilian network.

1970: President Anwar Sadat was sworn in as President of Egypt in succession to Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1970: Pierre Laporte, a Quebec cabinet minister, was kidnapped and murdered by Quebec separation terrorists.

1973: Arab oil producers increased oil prices and cut back production in response to U.S. support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

1989: The biennial conference of the 103 nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species settled on a world-wide ban on ivory trading.

1989: An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale struck the San Francisco area. 66 people were killed in the area, and damage was estimated at $10 billion.

1994: Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty, formally ending their 46-year state of war.

1997: Cuba re-buried the remains of leftist guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara, as a national hero, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.