Today in History October 17- Mother Teresa awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

October 17 is the 290th day of the year. There are 75 days remaining until the end of the year

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C.

Today's Highlight in History; 1979 – Mother Teresa awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C., commonly known as Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister and missionary of Albanian origin who lived for most of her life in India.

Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and is active in 133 countries. They run hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children's and family counselling programmes; orphanages; and schools. Members of the institute must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and the fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor".

Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2003, she was beatified as "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta". A second miracle credited to her intercession is required before she can be recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church.

President Ronald Reagan presents Mother Teresa with the
 Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony, 1985

A controversial figure both during her life and after her death, Mother Teresa was widely admired by many for her charitable works, but also widely criticised, particularly for her efforts opposing contraception and for substandard conditions in the hospices for which she was responsible.

Missionaries of Charity's Mother House
(Headquarters) in Kolkata

Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome in 1983, while visiting Pope John Paul II. After a second attack in 1989, she received an artificial pacemaker. In 1991, after a battle with pneumonia while in Mexico, she suffered further heart problems. She offered to resign her position as head of the Missionaries of Charity, but the sisters of the congregation, in a secret ballot, voted for her to stay. Mother Teresa agreed to continue her work as head of the congregation.




In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell and broke her collar bone. In August she suffered from malaria and failure of the left heart ventricle. She had heart surgery but it was clear that her health was declining. The Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry Sebastian D'Souza, said he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on Mother Teresa with her permission when she was first hospitalised with cardiac problems because he thought she may be under attack by the devil.

On 13 March 1997, she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September 1997.

-Wikipedia

World Events

1806 – Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I of Haiti is assassinated after an oppressive rule.
1888 – Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).
1917 – First British bombing of Germany in World War I.
1919 – RCA is incorporated as the Radio Corporation of America.
1931 – Al Capone convicted of income tax evasion.
1933 – Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.
1941 – For the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship.
1941 – German troops execute the male population of the villages Kerdyllia in Serres, Greece.
1943 – Burma Railway (Burma–Thailand Railway) is completed.
1943 – The Holocaust: Sobibór extermination camp is closed.
1945 – Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens becomes Prime Minister of Greece between the pull-out of the German occupation force in 1944 and the return of King Georgios II to Greece.
1956 – The first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in Sellafield,in Cumbria, England.
1961 – Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of former Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.
1965 – The 1964–65 New York World's Fair closes after a two-year run. More than 51 million people had attended the event.
1966 – A fire at a building in New York City kills 12 firefighters, the fire department's deadliest day until the September 11, 2001 attacks.
1966 – Botswana and Lesotho join the United Nations.
1973 – OPEC starts an oil embargo against a number of western countries, considered to have helped Israel in its war against Syria.
1977 – German Autumn: Four days after it is hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaining hostages on board.
1979 – Mother Teresa awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1979 – The Department of Education Organization Act is signed into law creating the US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services.
1980 – As part of the Holy See–United Kingdom relations a British monarch makes the first state visit to the Vatican
1989 – 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (7.1 on the Richter scale) hits the San Francisco Bay Area and causes 57 deaths directly (and 6 indirectly).
1992 – Having gone to the wrong house for a Halloween party, Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori is shot and killed by the homeowner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1994 – Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov is assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces.
2000 – Train crash at Hatfield, north of London, leading to collapse of Railtrack.
2001 – Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi became the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack.
2003 – The pinnacle is fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 56 metres (184 ft) and become the world's tallest highrise.