Historical Events on 17 Feb

Historical Events on 17 Feb

1500 - Battle of Hemmingstedt.
1600 - Philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned alive at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, charged of heresy.
1621 - Myles Standish is appointed as first commander of Plymouth colony.
1753 - February 17 is followed by March 1 as Sweden moves from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.
1801 - An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.
1814 - Battle of Mormans.
1819 - The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise.
1854 - The British recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State.
1864 - American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.
1865 - American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina is burned as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forces.
1867 - The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.
1871 - The victorious Prussian Army parades though Paris, France after the end of the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
1904 - Madama Butterfly premiers at La Scala in Milan.
1913 - The Armory Show opens in New York City, displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.
1924 - In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller sets a new world record in the 100-yard freestyle swimming competition with a time of 52-2/5 seconds.
1925 - Harold Ross and Jane Grant found The New Yorker magazine; the debut issue is dated February 21, 1925.
1933 - The magazine Newsweek is published for the first time.
1933 - The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States.
1936 - The world's first superhero, The Phantom, makes his first appearance in comics.
1944 - World War II: Operation Hailstone begins. U.S. naval air, surface, and submarine attack against Truk (Chuuk), Japan's main base in the central Pacific, in support of the Eniwetok invasion.
1944 - World War II: Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins. The battle ends in an American victory on February 22.
1947 - The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union.
1957 - A fire at a home for the elderly in Warrenton, Missouri kills 72 people.
1958 - Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare of Assisi (1193~1253) the patron saint of television.
1959 - Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2 - The first weather satellite launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.
1962 - A storm kills more than 300 people in Hamburg, West Germany.
1964 - In Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court of the United States rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.
1968 - In Springfield, Massachusetts the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens.
1972 - Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceed those of Ford Model-T.
1974 - Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House with a stolen helicopter.
1979 - The Sino-Vietnamese War begins.
1992 - A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sentences serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to life in prison.
1995 - Colin Ferguson is convicted of six counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and later receives a 200+ year sentence.
1995 - The Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador ends on a cease-fire brokered by the UN.
1996 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.
2003 - The London Congestion Charge scheme begins.
2006 - A massive mudslide occurs in Southern Leyte, Philippines; the official death toll is set at 1,126.
2008 - Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.