Today in History: May 17

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THE BAHAMAS – On this day in Bahamian history, in 1874 Saint Andrews Kirk Hall opened in New Providence. Located in Downtown Nassau on the corner of Princes Street and Peck Slope, the Kirk Hall was used for Sunday school and for midweek meetings.

The building cost four thousand pounds and the St. Andrew’s Ladies’ Society single handedly raised the funds.

Also around this time, a new road opened up connecting Princes’ Street and market street, which is known as “Peck’s Slope” — named after Captain Peck, who was general of the colony at the time.

After the revolutionary war in the United States, some 1,500 of the banished “Loyalists” landed in the Bahamas to settle on land granted to them by the crown.

Among the Loyalists who landed on our shores was twenty-nine year-old Michael Malcolm. 



Malcolm wrote to the St. Andrew’s Society encouraging the establishment of a kirk, where he and his fellow Scotsmen could meet in keeping with the rites and traditions of the Scottish church.

And then in 2019, police killed three men during ‪a s‬hoot out at a mansion in the affluent Eastern Road community.

Police say the men allegedly opened fire on officers as they executed a search warrant at 2:30 AM at a large home on Newgate Road in Blair Estates after they launched a manhunt operation in the area to locate a wanted suspect for a recent homicide.

Assistant Superintendent Solomon Cash said at the time police discovered 22 pounds of marijuana and multiple guns.

And finally in 2021, then Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis announced his administration was extending the state of emergency put in place during the COVID pandemic for another three months.

Dr. Minnis read a resolution in the House of Assembly lamenting the low vaccination rate and the third wave of COVID infections sweeping the country at the time.