Historical Events on 17 Mar

Historical Events on 17 Mar

1337 - Edward, the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy made in England.
1756 - St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in New York City for the first time (at the Crown and Thistle Tavern).
1776 - American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery overlooking the city.
180 - Marcus Aurelius dies. Commodus is now the only emperor of the Roman Empire.
1805 - The Italian Republic, with Napoleon as president, becomes the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon as King.
1845 - The rubber band is patented.
1861 - The Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) is proclaimed.
1901 - A showing of seventy-one Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.
1906 - The Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity is founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
1910 - Luther Gulick and his wife Charlotte found Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire USA) (formally announced in 1912).
1913 - The Uruguayan Air Force is founded.
1917 - Delta Phi Epsilon is founded at New York University Law School.
1921 - The Second Republic of Poland adopts the March Constitution.
1939 - Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945): The Battle of Nanchang between the Kuomintang and the Japanese breaks out.
1941 - In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1942 - Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lviv Ghetto (western Ukraine) are gassed at the Belzec death camp (eastern Poland).
1945 - The Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany collapses, ten days after its capture.
1948 - Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the NATO Agreement.
1950 - University of California, Berkeley researchers announce the creation of element 98, which they name "Californium".
1957 - A plane crash in Cebu, Philippines kills Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others.
1958 - The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite.
1959 - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet for India.
1960 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
1966 - Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.
1969 - Golda Meir becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel.
1970 - My Lai massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.
1973 - The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, depicting a former prisoner of war being reunited with his family.
1975 - The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad enter third and final bankruptcy, and William M. Gibbons selected as receiver and trustee for the railroad.
1979 - The Penmanshiel Tunnel collapses during engineering works, killing two workers.
1985 - Serial killer Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker", commits his first two murders in Los Angeles, California murder spree.
1988 - A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into a mountainside near the Venezuelan border killing 143.
1988 - Eritrean War of Independence: The Nadew Command, an Ethiopian army corps in Eritrea, is attacked on three sides by military units of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) in the opening action of the Battle of Afabet.
1992 - A suicide car-bomb kills 29 and injures 242 at the Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2000 - The 800+ deaths of members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God is considered to be a mass murder and suicide orchestrated by leaders of the cult.
2003 - British Cabinet Minister Robin Cook, resigns over government plans for the war with Iraq.
2004 - Unrest in Kosovo results in more than 22 killed, 200 wounded, and the destruction of 35 Serb Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Belgrade and Nis.
2008 - New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. David Paterson becomes acting New York State governor.
45 BC - In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda.