What Happened on March 17th in History
30 historical events on this date
The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo is formally organized with Emma Smith as president.
The Relief Society is a philanthropic and educational women's organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was founded in 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois, United States, and has more...
The First Taranaki War begins in Taranaki, New Zealand, a major phase of the New Zealand Wars.
The First Taranaki War was an armed conflict over land ownership and sovereignty that took place between MÄori and the Colony of New Zealand in the Taranaki region of New Zealand's North Island from...
The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed.
The Kingdom of Italy was a unitary state that existed from 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 18 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished,...
The first railway line of Finland between cities of Helsinki and HÀmeenlinna, called PÀÀrata, is officially opened.
The Finnish railway network consists of a total track length of 9,216Â km (5,727Â mi). Railways in Finland are built with a broad 1,524Â mm track gauge, of which 3,249Â km (2,019Â mi) is electrified....
SSÂ Utopia collides with HMSÂ Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar and sinks, killing 562 of the 880 passengers on board.
SS Utopia was a transatlantic passenger steamship built in 1874 by Robert Duncan & Co of Glasgow. From 1874 to 1882 she operated on Anchor Line routes from Glasgow to New York City, from Glasgow to...
The Second Polish Republic adopts the March Constitution.
The Second Polish Republic, officially known at the time as the Republic of Poland, was the Polish state that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939 after being established in the final...
Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland.
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million...
World War II: The Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany, collapses, ten days after its capture.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north,...
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley announce the creation of element 98, which they name "californium".
The University of California, Berkeley is a public land-grant research university in the Southside and Northside neighborhoods of Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after...
A plane crash in Cebu, Philippines kills Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others.
On March 17, 1957, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft crashed on the slopes of Mount Manunggal on the island of Cebu, Philippines, killing 25 of the aircraft's 26 occupants, including the...
The United States launches the first solar-powered satellite, which is also the first satellite to achieve a long-term orbit.
Vanguard 1 is an American satellite that was the fourth artificial Earth-orbiting satellite to be successfully launched, following Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, and Explorer 1. It was launched 17 March...
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.
Dwight David Eisenhower, also known as Ike, was the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. He led the Allied Expeditionary Force during the Second World War, launching decisive...
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 crashes in Tobin Township, Perry County, Indiana, killing 63.
Northwest Airlines Flight 710 was a scheduled flight between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Miami, Florida, with a stop in Chicago. On March 17, 1960, the six-month-old Lockheed L-188 Electra operating...
Mount Agung erupts on Bali killing more than 1,100 people.
Mount Agung is an active volcano in Karangasem Regency, Bali, Indonesia. It is located southeast of Mount Batur volcano, also in Bali. It is the highest point on Bali, and dominates the surrounding...
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSVÂ Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.
Alvin (DSV-2) is a crewed deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The original...
As a result of nerve gas testing by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps in Skull Valley, Utah, over 6,000 sheep are found dead.
Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of...
Golda Meir becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel.
Golda Meir was the prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. She was Israel's first and, to date, only female head of government.
The Pulitzer Prizeâwinning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, depicting a former prisoner of war being reunited with his family, which came to symbolize the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
The Pulitzer Prizes are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the...
The Penmanshiel Tunnel collapses during engineering works, killing two workers.
Penmanshiel Tunnel is a now-disused railway tunnel near Grantshouse, Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland. It was formerly part of the East Coast Main Line between...
Aeroflot Flight 1691 crashes on approach to Vnukovo International Airport, killing 58.
Aeroflot Flight 1691 crashed near Moscow Vnukovo Airport on 17 March 1979 killing 58 of the 119 people on board. The Tupolev Tu-104B operating the flight was overloaded and the crew received a...
Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles murder spree.
Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, better known as Richard Ramirez, was an American serial killer, sex offender and burglar whose killing spree occurred in Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay...
A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into a mountainside near the Venezuelan border killing 143.
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country located in South America, with insular regions in North America. Colombia's mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north,...
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 in the opening action of the Battle of Afabet.
The Eritrean War of Independence was an armed conflict and insurgency aimed at achieving self-determination and independence for Eritrea from Ethiopian rule. Starting in 1961, Eritrean insurgents...
Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires: Car bomb attack kills 29 and injures 242.
The attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was a suicide bombing attack on the building of the Israeli embassy of Argentina, located in Buenos Aires, which was carried out on 17 March 1992....
A referendum to end apartheid in South Africa is passed 68.7% to 31.2%.
A referendum on ending apartheid was held in South Africa on 17 March 1992. The referendum was limited to white South African voters, who were asked whether or not they supported the negotiated...
Five hundred and thirty members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in a fire, considered to be a mass murder or suicide orchestrated by leaders of the cult. Elsewhere another 248 members are later found dead.
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the...
Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council, Robin Cook, resigns from the British Cabinet in disagreement with government plans for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The leader of the House of Commons is a minister of the Crown of the Government of the United Kingdom whose main role is organising government business in the House of Commons. The Leader is always...
Unrest in Kosovo: More than 22 are killed and 200 wounded. Thirty-five Serbian Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Serbia are destroyed.
On 17â18 March 2004, violence erupted in Kosovo, leaving hundreds wounded and at least 19 people dead. The unrest was precipitated by unsubstantiated reports in the Kosovo Albanian media which...
Rojava conflict: At a conference in Rmelan, the Movement for a Democratic Society declares the establishment of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.
The Rojava Revolution, also known as the Rojava conflict is a political upheaval and military conflict taking place in northern Syria, known among Kurds as Western Kurdistan or Rojava.