Historical Events on May 17

Events 1 - 200 of 225

• 218 7th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
• 352 Liberius begins his reign as Catholic Pope replacing Julius I
• 884 St Adrian III begins his reign as Catholic Pope

• 1521 Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, is executed for treason
• 1525 Battle at Zabern: duke of Lutherans beats rebels

• 1579 Artois, Henegouwen and French-Flanders sign Treaty, the Peace of Parma recognizing Spanish Duke van Parma as land guardian
• 1590 Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland
• 1620 1st merry-go-round seen at a fair in Philippapolis, Turkey
• 1630 Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi, 1st to see 2 belts on Jupiter surface
• 1631 Earl Johann Tilly attacks Maagdenburg
• 1648 Emperor Ferdinand III defeats Maximilian I of Bavaria
• 1672 Frontenac becomes Governor of New France (Canada)
• 1673 Frenchmen Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit, set out from the Saint-Ignace mission on an expedition to explore the Mississippi river (reach border of Louisiana and Arkansas)
• 1683 Pirates sack Velacruz, New Spain, taking 4,000 prisoners for ransom

• 1712 Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria honored as "sovereign of Netherlands"

• 1733 Great Britain passes Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions

• 1744 French army takes Austrian Netherlands
• 1750 -18] Tax revolt in Gorinchem
• 1756 Britain declares war on France (7 Years' or French & Indian War)
• 1775 American Revolutionary War: the Continental Congress bans trade with Canada
• 1787 English slave ship Sisters, en route from Africa to Cuba, capsizes killing hundreds
• 1792 Twenty-four merchants form the New York Stock Exchange at 70 Wall Street
• 1794 Hard frost in southern New England
• 1803 John Hawkins and Richard French patent the Reaping Machine
• 1809 Papal States annexed by France
• 1814 Denmark cedes Norway to Sweden (National Day)
• 1814 Norwegian constitution passed by constituent assembly at Eidsvoll
• 1814 Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian

• 1848 Gerrit, Count Schimmelpenninck resigns as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Netherlands
• 1849 Fire destroy Centrum in St Louis, Missouri
• 1853 Thorbeckes liberals win 2nd-Parliamentary election
• 1859 Australian Rules Football first 'laws of the game' published
• 1860 German football club TSV 1860 München is founded

• 1862 Battle of Princeton West Virginia, ends with about 128 causalities
• 1863 Battle of Big Black River Bridge, Mississippi
• 1863 Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, her first book in the Galician language
• 1864 Battle of Adairsville Georgia, Union forces Confederates to retreat
• 1865 The International Telegraph Union (later the International Telecommunication Union) is established
• 1872 Bohemian Club incorporated in San Francisco
• 1875 1st Kentucky Derby: Oliver Lewis aboard Aristides wins in 2:37.75

• 1877 Edwin T Holmes installs 1st telephone switchboard burglar alarm

• 1881 Revised version of New Testament
• 1884 Alaska becomes a US territory

• 1890 Comic Cuts, 1st weekly comic paper, published in London
• 1890 Pietro Mascagni's opera "Rustic Chivalry" premieres in Rome at the Teatro Costanzi

• 1898 Camp Merritt forms in Presidio [see 0503]
• 1899 Victoria & Albert Museum foundation laid, London, England
• 1900 "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is first published by L. Frank Baum with illustrations by William Wallace Denslow in Chicago
• 1900 British troops relieve Mafeking (Cape Colony)
• 1900 In China, three villages within 100 miles of Peking are burned by Boxers and 60 Chinese Christians killed
• 1902 Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer
• 1903 Cleveland Indians beat NY Highlanders 9-2 in Columbus Ohio

• 1905 Waseda U of Tokyo defeats LA High School 5-3 in baseball
• 1909 White firemen on Georgia lroad strike to protest against hiring blacks
• 1910 Canada sets the designs for the 1-50 cent coins
• 1915 Cubs George "Zip" Zabel relieves with 2 outs in 1st & winds up with 4-3 19-inning win over Brooklyn in longest relief job ever

• 1915 National Baptist Convention chartered
• 1916 British Summer Time (Daylight Savings) introduced
• 1919 Maurice Ravel's orchestral piece "Alborada del gracioso" premieres in Paris by the Pasdeloup Orchestra
• 1919 UK War Department orders use of National Star Insignia on all airplanes
• 1920 1st De Havilland double-decker flight (London) lands in Schiphol
• 1920 1st flight by Dutch airlines KLM (Koninklijke-Luchtvaart-Maatschappij)
• 1920 First London-Amsterdam airline service, a joint venture between British Aerial Transport and KLM
• 1921 Belgian and Luxembourg sign customs union

• 1923 Fire during closing day ceremonies at Grover Cleveland School, South Carolina

• 1927 MLB Chicago Cubs beat Boston Braves, 4-3, in 22 innings, at Braves Field in Boston, Massachusetts
• 1927 U.S. Army aviation pioneer Major Harold Geiger dies in the crash of his Airco DH.4 de Havilland plane at Olmstead Field, Pennsylvania
• 1932 US Congress changes name "Porto Rico" to "Puerto Rico"

• 1937 Juan Negrin succeeds Largo Caballero as Spain's premier
• 1938 Radio quiz show "Information Please!" debuts on NBC Blue Network
• 1938 US Congress approves Vinson Naval Act, which funds a two-ocean navy
• 1939 1st televised baseball game is broadcast on NBC, with Princeton University defeating Columbia University 2-1

• 1940 Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium and begins invasion of France
• 1940 Nazis bombs Middelburg/B IJzerdrat begins illegal defiance
• 1941 Pennsylvania declares legal holiday to honor A's manager Connie Mack

• 1943 The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer).
• 1943 World War II: the Dambuster Raids by No. 617 Squadron RAF on German dams
• 1944 -18] Allied air raid on Surabaja, Java
• 1944 Chinese and US armed forces take Myitkyina Airport, Burma
• 1944 Operation Straightline: Allies land in Dutch New Guinea

• 1945 2 US P-47 Thunderbolts bomb Kiushu
• 1946 KVP Labor/Communists win 1st post-WW2 Dutch parliamentary elections
• 1946 US President Harry Truman seizes control of nation's railroads to delay a strike
• 1948 Israel liberates Acre, Nebi Yusha & Telel-Kadi
• 1948 Soviet Union recognizes Israel
• 1949 British government recognises Republic of Ireland (previously Irish Free State)
• 1953 Yanks & Browns use record 41 players in a game
• 1954 US Supreme Court unanimously rules on Brown v Topeka Board of Education reverses 1896 "separate but equal" Plessy v Ferguson decision ruling racial segregation in public schools as illegal
• 1955 Dutch government of Willem Drees resigns

• 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage, biggest civil rights demonstration to date (DC)
• 1957 School desegregation law, Brown v Board of education
• 1958 Emergency crisis proclaimed in Algeria

• 1960 1st atomic reactor system patented by J W Flora of Canoga Park, California
• 1961 Columbia Records officially opens the Pitman Pressing Plant, designed by American architect Minoru Yamasaki, in Pitman, New Jersey

• 1962 Marin County withdraws from BART district
• 1963 Houston Colt .45's Don Notterbart no-hits Phillies, 4-1
• 1963 US performs nuclear Test at Nevada Test Site

• 1964 Phillies triple play Houston Colt .45s
• 1966 KFDO (now KVIJ) TV channel 8 in Sayre, Oklahoma (ABC) begins broadcasting
• 1967 Dylan's 1965 UK Tour is released as film "Don't Look Back"
• 1968 European Space Research Org launches 1st satellite
• 1968 Frank Howard belts record 8th HR in 5th straight game
• 1968 US performs nuclear Test at Nevada Test Site
• 1969 "My Wife, My Dog, My Cat" by Maskman & The Agents hits #92
• 1969 Baltimore, Cleveland & Pittsburgh agree to go from NFC to AFC in NFL
• 1969 Russian probe Venera 6 landed on Venus

• 1971 Stephen Schwartz' musical "Godspell" premieres off-Broadway
• 1971 Washington State bans sex discrimination
• 1972 Netherlands & People's Republic of China exchange ambassadors
• 1972 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) fires on workers leaving the Mackies engineering works in west Belfast (Although the factory was sited in a Catholic area it had an almost entirely Protestant workforce)
• 1973 Angels outfielder Bobby Valentine breaks his leg trying to scale wall to prevent a Dick Green home run during a 5-4 loss to the A's
• 1973 Five British Army soldiers are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army booby-trap bomb in Omagh, County Tyrone
• 1973 Joe Ferguson, hits the 6,000th Dodger home run

• 1973 US performs 3 nuclear tests at Rifle Colorado
• 1973 US Senate Watergate Committee begins its hearings into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.

• 1974 Symbionese Liberation Army shoot-out with Los Angeles police kills six SLA members in the gunfire and resulting fire. One of the largest police shootouts in US history, with more than 9,000 rounds fired.
• 1974 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) explode four bombs in Republic of Ireland, killing 33 civilians, wounding 300 (highest number of casualties in a single incident during "The Troubles")
• 1975 "Funky Gibbon" by The Goodies hits #79
• 1975 10CC releases "I'm Not in Love"
• 1975 NBC pays $5M for rights to show "Gone With The Wind" one time

• 1976 Earthquake in Uzbekistan: thousands killed

• 1977 Nolan Bushnell opens the 1st Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre restaurant in San Jose, California
• 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers Lee Lacy hits record 3rd consecutive pinch-hit home run
• 1979 Coldest temperature ever recorded in Hawaii: 12°F (-11°C), on the Big Island at Mauna Kea Observatory, elevation 13,796 feet
• 1979 MLB Philadelphia Phillies win over Cubs, 23-22 in 10 innings at Wrigley Field on a breezy day in Chicago; teams combine for 13 first inning runs, and finish game with 50 hits, including 11 homeruns
• 1980 Major race riot in Miami, Florida - 16 killed, 300 injured

• 1980 V. S. Kumar Anandan from Sri Lanka balances on one foot for 33 hours (Guinness World Record)
• 1981 Islanders score 5 power play goals against Flyers in a playoff
• 1983 Israel & Lebanon sign a peace treaty
• 1983 Stanley Cup Final, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY: 4 consecutive titles for NY Islanders; sweep Edmonton Oilers in 4 games with a 4-2 Game 4 win
• 1984 Cincinnati Reds Mario Soto throws 4 strikeouts in one inning
• 1984 Marvin Creamer becomes 1st known person to sail around the world without navigational instruments, arriving back in Cape May, New Jersey, after 513 days

• 1985 Les Anderson, catches record 97 lb 4 oz Chinook salmon, while fishing off coast of Alaska
• 1986 "Chicken Song" by Spitting Image hits #1 on the UK pop chart
• 1987 USS Stark hit by Iraqi missiles, 37 sailors die
• 1989 Longest Cab Ride: 14,000 miles costs $16,000 (later surpassed)

• 1990 Dow Jones avg hits a record 2,831.71
• 1990 European court rules on pension rights for men & women

• 1990 WIBC Bowling Queens won by Patty Ann
• 1990 World Health Organization takes homosexuality out of its list of mental illnesses

• 1994 Bakili Muluzi's UDF wins Malawi presidents/parliamentary election
• 1996 Habib & Whitaker make 320 for 5th Cricket wkt, Leics v Worcs

• 1997 WIBC Bowling Queens won by Sandra Jo Shiery-Odom
• 1998 New York Yankees pitcher David Wells tosses a perfect game in a 4-0 win against the Minnesota Twins at Yankee Stadium, NY
• 2000 In the Philippines an explosion rocks Glorietta 2 injuring 13 persons, mostly teenagers. According to local authorities, the homemade bomb was placed in front of a toilet beside a video arcade.

• 2004 Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage

• 2006 The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to be an artificial reef
• 2007 Demolition work begins at Dublin's famous Lansdowne Road Stadium to be replaced by the new Aviva Stadium, opened in 2010
• 2007 Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments. This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized Zone since 1953.

• 2009 Video game Minecraft is first released to the public while in development
• 2010 Archaeologists announce the discovery of the oldest tomb in Mesoamerica at 2,700 years old, at Chiapa de Corzo, Mexico, containing the remains of 50 year old man [1]
• 2013 90 people are killed and 200 are injured after a series of bombings across Iraq
• 2014 Atlético Madrid win the 2013–14 La Liga

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