Calendar for October 17th, 2012

St. Ignatius of Antioch

1662: Charles II of England sold Dunkerque to France for 40,000 pounds

1829: Sam Patch, the Yankee Leaper, jumped 120 feet from a platform atop Niagara Falls into the river below. He survived.

Died 1849: Frederic Chopin (composer)

Born 1859: Buck Ewing (first catcher to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame)

Died 1910: Julia Ward Howe (author)

Born 1915: Arthur Miller (author)

Born 1918: Rita Hayworth (actress)

Born 1921: Tom Poston (actor)

Born 1930: Jimmy Breslin (columnist)

1931: Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion by a federal court in Chicago and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.

1933: Physicist Albert Einstein arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from Nazi Germany

1937: Huey, Dewey, and Louie (Donald Duck's nephews) first appeared in a comic strip

Born 1938: Evel Knievel (stunt motorcyclist)

Born 1947: Michael McKean (actor)

Born 1948: George Wendt (actor)

Born 1948: Margot Kidder (actress)

Born 1956: Mae Jemison (astronaut, physician, professor)

Born 1958: Alan Jackson (country musician)

1963: An earthquake 50 miles out at sea shook eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island

Died 1979: S. J. Perelman (writer)

1979: Mother Teresa of India was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the destitute in Calcutta.

Died 1998: Joan Hickson (actress)

Died 2004: Betty Hill (the woman known as "the first lady of UFOs." Hill and her late husband had the first publicized and best-documented UFO experience)

Died 2004: Ray Boone (baseball player)

Died 2007: Joey Bishop (comedian)

Died 2008: Levi Stubbs (lead singer of The Four Tops)

2012: A meteorite chunk struck a house in the San Francisco Bay Area