On May 17th...

links will open in a new window

1510 Painter Sandro Botticelli died.

1575 Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, died.

1727 Empress Catherine of Russia died.

1733 England passed the Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions.

1749 Edward Jenner, physician who developed a vaccine against rabies, was born.

1756 Britain declared war on France.

1792 The New York Stock Exchange was founded by 24 brokers in New York City.

1814 Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden.

1829 John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, died.

1836 Astronomer Norman Lockyer was born.

1838 Explorer René Caillié died.
1838 French Revolutionary leader Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord died.

1865 The International Telegraph Union was established.

1875 The first Kentucky Derby was run.
1875 American politician John C. Breckinridge died.

1877 Edwin T. Holmes installed the first telephone switchboard burglar alarm.

1879 Asa Packer, founder of Lehigh Valley Railroad, died.

1883 "Buffalo Bill" Cody staged his first Wild West show.

1884 The District of Alaska was established.

1886 King Alfonso XIII of Spain was born.
1886 John Deere, inventor of the steel plow, died.

1893 Inventor Frederick McKinley Jones was born.

1902 Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovered the Antikythera mechanism, believed to be an ancient mechanical analog computer.

1915 The National Baptist Convention was chartered.

1931 Cult leader Marshall Applewhite was born.

1936 Actor Dennis Hopper was born.

1948 The Soviet Union recognized Israel.

1949 The British government recognized the Republic of Ireland.

1951 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools are unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.

1956 Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard was born.
1956 Actor Bob Seger was born.

1961 Russell Cave National Monument was established near Bridgeport, Alabama.
1961 Musician Enya was born.

1963 A bomb placed inside a mailbox in Montreal, Canada, exploded and seriously injured bomb demolition expert Sergeant Major Walter Leja.

1968 The European Space Research Organization launched its first satellite.

1973 The Senate Watergate Committee began hearings.

1978 British politician John Selwyn Brooke Selwyn Lloyd died.

1983 Israel and Lebanon signed a peace treaty.

1985 Songwriter/composer Abe Burrows died.

1987 The U. S. S. Stark, a Navy frigate on patrol in the Persian Gulf, was struck by missiles fired by an Iraqi warplane, resulting in the deaths of 37 sailors.

1990 The World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

1992 Band leader Lawrence Welk died.

1996 Scott Evans Brayton died in a crash during practice for the Indianapolis 500.

2002 James Chichester-Clark, former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, died.

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

2005 Actor Frank Gorshin died.

2011 Baseball player Harmon Killebrew died.

2012 Singer Donna Summer died.

2013 Musician Alan O'Day died.
2013 Golfer Ken Venturi died.
2013 Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla died.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on June 25, 2018.