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October 17 in History

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The Deluge at the Horse Shoe Brewery

October 17, 1814

The Deluge at the Horse Shoe Brewery

When an enormous fermentation vat ruptured in central London in eighteen fourteen, over a million pints of dark porter tore through the slums of Saint Giles. Behind the myth of a drunken street celebration lies a grim industrial disaster that British authorities ruled an act of God.

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Also on this day

More that happened on October 17

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  1. 1529King Henry VIII removed Cardinal Thomas Wolsey from high office after he failed to secure a papal marriage annulment.
  2. 1777British General John Burgoyne surrendered his entire army to American forces following the pivotal battles near Saratoga, New York.
  3. 1815Exiled French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte landed under armed guard on the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena.
  4. 1855English inventor Henry Bessemer secured a patent for his innovative industrial method of mass-producing inexpensive, high-quality steel.
  5. 1912Greece and Serbia joined Bulgaria in declaring war against the Ottoman Empire, escalating the First Balkan War.
  6. 1931Federal prosecutors secured a tax evasion conviction against notorious Chicago gang leader Al Capone in an Illinois court.
  7. 1933Physicist Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as an immigrant, fleeing rising anti-Semitic persecution in Nazi Germany.
  8. 1956Queen Elizabeth II officially opened Calder Hall in Cumberland, the world's first commercial-scale nuclear power station.
  9. 1973Arab oil producers implemented export restrictions against Western nations that supported Israel during the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.
  10. 1989The destructive Loma Prieta earthquake struck northern California, causing widespread collapses across the San Francisco Bay Area.
  11. 2003Construction workers affixed the final pinnacle to the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, establishing the world's tallest skyscraper.

Chosen from the October 17 pages of HISTORY, HistoryNet and OnThisDay.com, retold in our own words.