[Amnorix]

December 17

1398. Timur, sometimes known as Tamerlane, crushes the Sultan's armies outside Delhi. The conqueror will enter the city and his armies will rampage for eight days, killing 100,000.

1777. France formally recognizes the USA.

1862. US General Ulysses S. Grant issues the infamous General Order No 11, expelling all Jews from his military districts, which were then comprised of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. The order was predicated on an effort to stop a black market around cotton smuggling, which was used to financially support the South, and which Grant believed was mostly being carried out by those of Jewish origin. President Lincoln would soon revoke the order, and Grant would claim (dubiously) that it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he has signed it without reading it.

1903. Having effected repairs to their plane after the failed effort of a few days ago, the Wright Brothers successfully test their heavier-than-air flying machine.

1944. Elements of the SS Sixth German Panzer Army, under Sepp Dietrich, massacre captured US soldiers. The massacre will become part of the Dachau Trials of 1946, and Dietrich will admit that Hitler had ordered that under the Third Reich's dire circumstances, the far more brutal "tactics" of the Eastern Front were to be used in the West to hopefully terrorize the Allied forces. Dietrich will be sentenced to 25 years, serving 10, for these acts, and then retried and serve some additional time for other crimes committed during the Nazi years.

1989. First episode of the Simpsons airs in the US.