Today is Saturday, October 17, the 290th day of 2015. There are 75 days left in the year.
1492 ― Columbus sights isle of San Salvador (Watling Island, Bahamas)
1855 ― Bessemer steelmaking process patented
1860 ― First pro golf tournament held (Scotland) (Willie Park wins)
1918 ― Yugoslavia proclaims itself a republic
1931 ― Al Capone convicted of tax evasion, sentenced to 11 years in prison
1933 ― Albert Einstein arrives in the U.S., a refugee from Nazi Germany
1945 ― Juan Peron becomes dictator of Argentina
1957 ― French author Albert Camus awarded Nobel Prize in Literature
1961 ― N.Y. Museum of Modern Art hung Henri Matisse's “Le Bateau" upside-down; it wasn't corrected until Dec. 3
1967 ― The play “Hair" is first performed
1977 ― West German commandos storm hijacked Lufthansa in Mogadishu, Somalia freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the four hijackers
1979 ― Mother Teresa of India, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize