Today in history–May 17
1642: Paul Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve founds a new settlement in territory disputed between the Algonquins and the Iroquois. He names it Ville Marie de Montréal.
1775: In retaliation for British trade sanctions, the new Continental Congress bans trade between the United States and Canada, but hardly anyone pays attention.
1792: Twenty-four stockbrokers, meeting under a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street in New York City, sign the “Buttonwood Agreement,” establishing the organization that will later become the New York Stock Exchange.
1829: John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, dies at Westchester County, New York. He apparently never realized that his job was the most important in the country, charged with settling all the nation’s most sensitive and divisive issues, since he gave it up to take what he thought the more important job of Governor of New York.
1846: Belgian Antoine Joseph Adolphe Sax patents the saxophone. While it makes his reputation, subsequent patent litigation will leave him bankrupt.
1875: Ten thousand spectators watch the first running of the Kentucky Derby on 80 acres of land near Louisville leased from John and Henry Churchill.
1875: Lawyer John Cabell Breckenridge, president of the Elizabethtown, Lexington, & Big Sandy Railroad Co., dies at Lexington, Kentucky. He is the only former U.S. vice president to have taken up arms against his country.
1900: Sayyid Ruhollah Khomeini, who will have a much bigger impact on world legal systems in 20th century than any American law professor, is born at Khomein in Iran.
1915: The Asquith government falls in the U.K. No one at the time realizes it will be the last government that Britain’s oldest political party, the Liberals, wil ever form.
1943: The U.S. Army and the University of Pennsylvania sign a contract to develop the world’s first all-electronic computer, known as the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, or ENIAC.
1954: The United States Supreme Court issues its decision in Brown v. Board of Education.