List of May 17 Historical Events and Facts

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This Day In History: List of May 17 Historical Events and Facts

• 1521: Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, is executed for treason.
• 1536: George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford and four other men are executed for treason.
• 1590: Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.
• 1642: Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de MontrÈal.
• 1673: Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.
• 1775: American Revolutionary War: the Continental Congress bans trade with Canada.
• 1792: The New York Stock Exchange is formed.
• 1805: Muhammad Ali becomes Wali of Egypt.
• 1809: Napoleon I of France orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire.
• 1814: Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian.
• 1814: The Constitution of Norway is signed and the Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik is elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly.
• 1849: A fire threatens to burn St. Louis, Missouri to the ground.
• 1860: German football club TSV 1860 M¸nchen is founded
• 1863: RosalÌa de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, the first book in the Galician language.
• 1865: The International Telegraph Union is established in Paris.
• 1873: El Paso, Texas is established by charter from the Texas Legislature.
• 1875: Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby.
• 1877: The Victorian Football League of Australia is founded.
• 1900: Second Boer War: British troops relieve Mafeking.
• 1902: Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer.
• 1914: The Protocol of Corfu is signed recognising full autonomy to Northern Epirus under nominal Albanian sovereignty.
• 1915: The last British Liberal Party government falls.
• 1919: The British War Department orders use of National Star Insignia on all airplanes.
• 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.
• 1933: Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort form Nasjonal Samling ó the national-socialist party of Norway.
• 1939: The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the United States’ first televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City.
• 1940: World War II: Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium.
• 1940: World War II: the old city centre of the Dutch town of Middelburg is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, to force the surrender of the Dutch armies in Zeeland.
• 1943: The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School to develop the ENIAC.
• 1943: World War II: the Dambuster Raids by No.

617 Squadron RAF on German dams.

• 1954: The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v.

Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

• 1967: Six-Day War: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt.
• 1969: Venera program: Soviet Venera 6 begins its descent into the atmosphere of Venus, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.
• 1970: Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II to sail the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1973: Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.
• 1974: Police in Los Angeles, California, raid the Symbionese Liberation Army’s headquarters, killing six members, including Camilla Hall.
• 1974: Thirty-three people are killed by terrorist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland.
• 1980: General Chun Doo-hwan of South Korea declares martial law in order to suppress student demonstrations.
• 1980: On the eve of presidential elections, Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path attacks a polling location in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, starting the Internal conflict in Peru.
• 1983: The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world’s largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee , in response to the Appalachian Observer’s Freedom of Information Act requeSt.
• 1983: Lebanon, Israel, and the United States sign an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
• 1984: Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend,” sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture.
• 1987: An Iraqi fighter jet fires two missiles into the U.S. warship USS Stark, killing 37 and injuring 21 of her crew.
• 1990: The General Assembly of the World Health Organization eliminates homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.
• 1992: Three days of popular protests against the government of Prime Minister of Thailand Suchinda Kraprayoon begin in Bangkok, leading to a military crackdown that results in 52 officially confirmed deaths, many disappearances, hundreds of injuries, and over 3,500 arrests.
• 1994: Malawi holds its first multi-party elections.
• 1997: Troops of Laurent Kabila march into Kinshasa.

Zaire is officially renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• 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 as an artificial reef.
• 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: Dalia Grybauskaite is elected the first female President of Lithuania.