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Billy the Kid / Pulitzer Prize / Korea / Monica Lewinsky

On This Day (August 17): Your quick daily trip back in time.

Author

Fatih Taskiran
August 17, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

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🌟 Editor's Note

Good morning. It's Sunday, Aug. 17, and in this weekend edition, we're discovering Billy the Kid's first victim, the birth of Pulitzer Prizes, Korea's division, Bill Clinton's confession in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and much more.

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🚀 Time Machine

-1877

Billy the Kid wounds a blacksmith in Arizona, and he dies on the following day. He was the famous outlaw’s first victim.

-1903

Joseph Pulitzer donates $1 million to Columbia University and starts the Pulitzer Prizes in America.

-1945

Korea is divided into two countries, North and South Korea, along the 38th parallel.

-1945

Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia (formerly the Dutch East Indies) independent from the Netherlands.

-1947

The Radcliffe Line was revealed, setting the border between the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.

-1978

After 137 hours flying from Presque Isle, Maine, the Double Eagle II lands in a barley field near Paris, marking the first transatlantic balloon flight.

-1979

Terry Jones' "Monty Python's Life of Brian" premieres in US theaters.

-1998

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, US President Bill Clinton admitted in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with the intern and, on the same day, admitted that he "misled people" about it.

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📷 Snapshot

The so-called "Jap hunting license" was a faux-official document used for recruiting and anti-Japanese propaganda after Pearl Harbor, 1941

💬 Final Words

❝

“I’m losing.”

🗿 Strange Times

Table > Throne: The Feast That Killed a King

This is one of the weirdest deaths ever. King Henry I didn’t fall in battle; he fell at the table. In 1135, England’s monarch—famously obsessed with lampreys, the jawless, eel-like “vampire fish”—ignored warnings and gorged himself during a late-night binge, then collapsed soon after.

Even though they're tasty, they're not traditionally eaten in large quantities. Henry I begged to differ. One theory blames lamprey toxins; a grim footnote says the doctor who removed Henry's brain died days later, adding poison to the list.

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