August 17
is the 229th day of the year (230th in
leap years) in the
Gregorian Calendar. There are 136 days remaining.
*
1427 - First band of gypsies visits Paris, according to an account of the
citizen of Paris*
1807 -
Robert Fulton's first American
steamboat leaves
New York City for
Albany, New York on the
Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.
*
1850 -
Argentine War of Independence hero, General
José de San Martín, dies in Boulogne-sur-Mer (France), at the age of 77.
*
1862 -
Indian Wars:
Lakota (Sioux) uprising begins in
Minnesota as desperate Lakota attack white settlements along the
Minnesota River. They will be overwhelmed by the U.S. military six weeks later.
*
1863 -
American Civil War: In
Charleston, South Carolina,
Union batteries and ships bombard
Confederate-held
Fort Sumter. Bombardment will not end until
December 31, 1863.
*
1864 - American Civil War: Confederate forces defeated
Union troops at the
Battle of Gainesville.
*
1877 -
Arizona blacksmith F.P. Cahill is fatally wounded by
Billy the Kid. Cahill will die the next day, becoming the first person killed by the Kid.
*
1883 -
Dominican Republic the first public performance of the Dominican National Anthem,
Quisqueyanos valientes*
1914 -
World War I: The
German army of General
Hermann von Francois defeats the
Russian force commanded by
Pavel Rennenkampf at the
Battle of Stalluponen.
*
1915 -
Jewish American
Leo Frank is
lynched for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl in
Marietta, Georgia.
*
1918 -
Bolshevik revolutionary leader
Moisei Uritsky is
assassinated.
*
1943 -
World War II: The U.S.
Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the
Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission.
*1943 - World War II: The
U.S. Seventh Army under General
George S. Patton arrive in
Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal
Bernard L. Montgomery, thus completing the
Allied conquest of
Sicily.
*1943 - World War II -
First Quebec Conference of
Winston Churchill,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and
William Lyon Mackenzie King begins.
*
1945 -
Indonesia proclaims itself independent from the
Netherlands.
*
1953 -
Addiction: First meeting of
Narcotics Anonymous in Southern
California.
*
1960 -
Gabon gains independence from
France.
*
1962 -
East German border guards kill 18-year-old
Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the
Berlin Wall into West
Berlin. He thus became the first victim of the wall.
*
1963 - A ferry linking remote islands off the coast of
Okinawa sinks, killing 112.
*
1969 - Category 5
Hurricane Camille hits the
Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage.
*
1970 -
Venera program:
Venera 7 is launched. It will later becomes the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another
planet,
Venus.
*
1978 -
Double Eagle II becomes first
balloon to cross the
Atlantic Ocean when it lands in
Miserey near
Paris, 137 hours after leaving
Presque Isle, Maine.
*
1979 - Two
Soviet Aeroflot jetliners collide in mid-air over
Ukraine, killing 156
*
1980 -
Azaria Chamberlain disappears, likely taken by a
dingo, leading to what was then the most
publicised trial in
Australian history.
*
1988 -
Pakistani President
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and US Ambassador
Arnold Raphel are killed in a plane crash.
*
1991 - Wade Frankum starts his killing spree in Strathfield, Australia, an event that was later dubbed the
Strathfield Massacre.
*
1998 -
Monica Lewinsky scandal:
US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with
White House intern
Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admits before the nation that he "misled people" about his relationship.
*
1999 - A 7.4-magnitude
earthquake strikes
Izmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 and injuring 44,000.
*
2004 -
MD5 collision found by
Chinese researchers.
* 2004 - The
National Assembly of Serbia unanimously adopts new state symbols for
Serbia:
Boze Pravde becomes the new anthem and the
coat of arms is adopted for the whole country.
*
2005 - The first forced
evacuation of
settlers, as part of the
Israel unilateral disengagement plan, starts.
*
1473 -
Richard, Duke of York, one of the
Princes in the Tower (d.
1483?)
*
1562 -
Hans Leo Hassler (baptised), German composer (d.
1612)
*
1578 -
Francesco Albani, Italian painter (d.
1660)
*
1601 -
Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician (d.
1665)
*
1629 - King
John III of Poland (d.
1696)
*
1768 -
Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Veygoux, French general (d.
1800)
*
1786 -
Davy Crockett, American frontiersman and soldier (d.
1836)
*
1828 -
Jules Bernard Luys, French neurologist (d.
1897)
*
1844 - Emperor
Menelek II of Ethiopia (d.
1913)
*
1866 -
Julia Marlowe, Shakespearean actress (d.
1950)
*
1882 -
Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood producer (d.
1974)
*
1887 -
Marcus Garvey, Jamaican leader,
Rastafari prophet (d.
1940)
* 1887 - Emperor
Charles I of Austria (d.
1922)
*
1890 -
Harry Hopkins, 8th
United States Secretary of Commerce (d.
1946)
*
1893 -
Mae West, American actress and playwright (d.
1980)
*
1904 -
Leopold Nowak, Austrian musicologist
*
1911 -
Mikhail Botvinnik, chess player (d.
1995)
*
1913 -
W. Mark Felt,
FBI associate director and
Deep Throat Watergate informant
* 1913 -
Rudy York, baseball player (d.
1970)
*
1920 -
Maureen O'Hara, actress
*
1926 -
Jiang Zemin, former
President of the People's Republic of China*
1929 -
Francis Gary Powers, U-2 pilot (d.
1977)
*
1930 -
Glenn Corbett, actor (d.
1993)
* 1930 -
Ted Hughes, English poet (d.
1998)
*
1932 -
V. S. Naipaul, West Indian-born writer,
Nobel Prize laureate
*
1933 -
Gene Kranz,
NASA flight director
*
1935 -
Oleg Tabakov, Russian actor
*
1939 -
Luther Allison, American blues guitarist
*
1943 -
Robert De Niro, American actor
*
1948 -
Rod MacDonald, American musician
*
1951 -
Alan Minter, boxer
*
1952 -
Nelson Piquet, Brazilian formula one driver
* 1952 -
Guillermo Vilas, Argentinian tennis player
*
1954 -
Eric Johnson, guitarist
*
1955 -
Richard Hilton, American heir
*
1956 -
Gail Berman, president of
Paramount Pictures*
1957 -
Robin Cousins, British figure skater
*
1958 -
Belinda Carlisle, American singer
* 1958 -
Kirk Stevens, Canadian snooker player
*
1959 -
David Koresh, American cult leader (d.
1993)
*
1960 -
Sean Penn, American actor, director
*
1962 -
Gilby Clarke, American musician
Guns N' Roses*
1964 -
Colin James, blues musician
*
1966 -
Rodney Mullen, American skateboarder
* 1966 -
William E. Dudley, American poet
*
1968 -
Ed McCaffrey, American football player
*
1969 -
Donnie Wahlberg, American actor and singer
*
1970 -
Jim Courier, American tennis player
* 1970 -
Oyvind Leonhardsen, Norwegian footballer
*
1971 -
Jorge Posada, Puerto Rican
Major League Baseball player
*
1977 -
Thierry Henry, French footballer
* 1977 -
Tarja Turunen, Finnish singer (
Nightwish)
* 1977 -
William Gallas, French footballer
*
1979 -
Antwaan Randle El, American football player
*
1980 -
Lene Marlin, Norwegian singer
*
1980 -
Keith Dabengwa, Zimbabwean cricketer
*
1986 -
Rudy Gay, American basketball player
*
1153 -
Eustace IV of Boulogne, son of
Stephen of England*
1304 -
Emperor Go-Fukakusa of Japan (b.
1243)
*
1510 -
Edmund Dudley, English statesman
*
1657 -
Robert Blake, British admiral (b.
1599)
*
1676 -
Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen, German novelist
*
1673 -
Regnier de Graaf, Dutch physician and anatomist (b.
1641)
*
1720 -
Anne Lefèvre, French scholar (b.
1654)
*
1723 -
Joseph Bingham, English scholar (b.
1668)
*
1768 (N. S.) -
Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky, Russian poet (b.
1703)
*
1785 -
Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of the Colony and the state of Connecticut (b.
1710)
*
1786 - King
Frederick II of Prussia (b.
1712)
*
1834 -
Husein Gradaščević, Bosnian rebel leader (b.
1802)
*
1850 -
Don José de San Martín, Argentine general (b.
1778)
*
1875 -
Wilhelm Bleek, linguist (b.
1827)
*
1880 -
Ole Bull, Norwegian violinist (b.
1810)
*
1896 -
Bridget Driscoll, world's first automobile fatality
*
1901 -
Edmond Audran, French composer (b.
1842)
*
1918 -
Moisei Uritsky, Russian revolutionary (b.
1873)
*
1920 -
Ray Chapman, baseball player (b.
1891)
*
1925 -
Ioan Slavici, Transylvanian writer of Romanian origin (b.
1848)
*
1954 -
Billy Murray, recording artist (b.
1877)
*
1969 -
Otto Stern, German physicist,
Nobel Prize laureate (b.
1888)
*
1971 -
Wilhelm List, German field marshal (b.
1880)
*
1973 -
Jean Barraqué, French composer (b.
1928)
* 1973 -
Paul Williams, American singer (
The Temptations) (b.
1939)
* 1973 -
Conrad Aiken, American author (b.
1889)
*
1979 -
Vivian Vance, actress (b.
1909)
*
1983 -
Ira Gershwin, American lyricist (b.
1896)
*
1987 -
Rudolf Hess, Nazi deputy (b.
1894)
*
1988 -
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq,
President of Pakistan (b.
1924)
*
1990 -
Pearl Bailey, American singer and actress (b.
1918)
*
1992 -
Al Parker, actor (b.
1952)
*
2004 -
Gérard Souzay, French baritone (b.
1918)
*
2005 -
John Bahcall, astrophysicist (b.
1934)
*
Independence Day " observance in
Indonesia*
Rastafarianism - celebration of the birth of
Marcus Garvey*
Roman Empire -
Portunalia in honor of
Portunes*
BBC: On This DayAugust 16 -
August 18 -
July 17 -
September 17 --
listing of all days
