Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 17
This is a list of selected October 17 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
| ← October 16 | October 18 → |
|---|
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
-
King David II of Scotland -
Kepler's Supernova -
Johannes Kepler -
Johannes Kepler's original drawing of Supernova 1604 -
Failed Cypress structure caused by the Loma Prieta earthquake -
Emperor Jacques I of Haiti -
Al Capone -
Mary MacKillop -
Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence -
Lake Burley Griffin
.jpg)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| International Day for the Eradication of Poverty | stub, needs more footnotes |
| Loyalty Day in Argentina (1945) | refimprove |
| Dessalines Day in Haiti (1806) | refimprove |
| 1448 – Ottoman wars in Europe: The Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi engaged an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II. | refimprove section |
| 1456 – The University of Greifswald in present-day Greifswald, Germany, was founded with the approval of the Holy Roman Empire and Pope Callixtus III. | advertisement, unreferenced sections |
| 1558 – Poczta Polska, the Polish postal service, was founded by order of King Sigismund II Augustus. | date unclear, contradicts the Poczta Polska article (October 18) |
| 1806 – Emperor Jacques I of Haiti was assassinated near Port-au-Prince. | refimprove section |
| 1940 – The body of Willi Münzenberg, a communist who was the leading propagandist for the Communist Party of Germany, was found near Saint-Marcellin, France. | lots of CN tags (7) |
| 1943 – The Empire of Japan completed the Burma Railway to support its forces in the Burma Campaign of World War II at the cost of approximately 100,000 lives of forced labourers. | refimprove section |
| 1956 – Queen Elizabeth II opened the world's first commercial nuclear power plant at Calder Hall in Cumbria, England. | refimprove section |
| 1961 – In Paris, the French police under Maurice Papon attacked a peaceful but illegal demonstration of some 30,000 opposed to the Algerian War, killing somewhere between 40 and 200 people. | refimprove sections |
| 1973 – The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries began an oil embargo against a number of western countries, whom they believed were helping Israel in the Yom Kippur War. | refimprove section |
| 1989 – The 6.9 Mw Loma Prieta earthquake struck California's San Francisco Bay Area, killing 63 people, injuring 3,757, and leaving at least 8,000 homeless. | refimprove section |
| 1994 – Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov was assassinated in the offices of Moskovskij Komsomolets during his investigations into alleged corruption among high ranks of the Russian military. | refimprove section |
| 2010 – Mary MacKillop was canonised to become the first Australian to be recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint. | lots of CN tags (6), especially in one section |
| Natalia Goncharova |d|1962 | refimprove section |
Eligible
- 1604 – German astronomer Johannes Kepler began observations of an exceptionally bright object, now known as Kepler's Supernova, that had appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus.
- 1660 – A series of executions of the commissioners who signed the death warrant of Charles I of England concluded; six were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason.
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British general John Burgoyne's Saratoga campaign ended with his surrender to the Americans, later convincing France to enter the war in alliance with the United States.
- 1814 – A wooden beer-fermenting vat in London burst, destroying a second vat and causing a large flood of at least 128,000 imperial gallons (580,000 l; 154,000 US gal) of porter that killed eight people.
- 1860 – The Open Championship, the oldest of the four major championships in men's golf, was first played at Prestwick Golf Club in Prestwick, Scotland.
- 1964 – Prime Minister Robert Menzies inaugurated the artificial Lake Burley Griffin (pictured) in the centre of the Australian capital Canberra.
- 1969 – The Caravaggio painting Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence was stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Italy.
- 1992 – Having gone to the wrong house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a Halloween party, Japanese exchange student Yoshihito Hattori was shot and killed by the homeowner.
- 2001 – Rehavam Ze'evi, the Israeli minister of tourism, was assassinated in revenge for the killing of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa.
- Born/died: | al-Muti' |d|974| John Scott |d|1485| Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke |d|1781| Childe Hassam |b|1859| George Nicol |b|1870| Haritina Korotkevich |b|1882| Herbert Howells |b|1892| Raffaele Bendandi |b|1893 | Don Coryell |b|1924| Andrew B. Turnbull |d|1960| Chuka Umunna |b|1978|
Notes
- U.S. Open (golf) appears on October 4, so The Open Championship should not appear in the same year
- Anna Politkovskaya appears on October 7, so Dmitry Kholodov should not appear in the same year
King David II of Scotland
- 1346 – Hundred Years' War: King David II of Scotland (pictured) was captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross following his invasion of England under the terms of Scotland's Auld Alliance with France.
- 1931 – American gangster Al Capone was convicted on five counts of income-tax evasion.
- 1952 – Indonesian Army elements surrounded the Merdeka Palace, demanding that President Sukarno disband the Provisional People's Representative Council.
- 1973 – Yom Kippur War: Egyptian forces retreated from the Battle of the Chinese Farm, allowing Israeli forces to build their first bridge across the Suez Canal.
- 2000 – A fatal rail accident at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, led to the introduction of widespread speed limit reductions throughout the British rail network and eventually caused the collapse of the railway management group Railtrack.
- Beatrice of Falkenburg (d. 1277)
- Jupiter Hammon (b. 1711)
- James Scott (b. 1947)
- Micheline Ostermeyer (d. 2001)
More anniversaries: