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. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
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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
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| International Day for the Eradication of Poverty | stub, needs more footnotes |
| Tihar/Swanti begins (Nepalese calendar, 2017); | both: refimprove |
| Loyalty Day in Argentina (1945) | 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 |
| 1662 – King Charles II of England sold Dunkirk to France for £40,000. | expansion |
| 1806 – Emperor Jacques I of Haiti was assassinated near Port-au-Prince. | needs more footnotes |
| 1860 – The Open Championship, the oldest of the four major championships in men's golf, was first played at Prestwick Golf Club in Prestwick, Ayrshire, Scotland. | refimprove section |
| 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 the Prefect of Police 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 section |
| 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 |
| 1992 – Having gone to the wrong house for a Halloween party, Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori was shot and killed by the homeowner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. | multiple issues |
Eligible
- 1558 – Poczta Polska, the Polish postal service, was founded by order of King Sigismund II Augustus.
- 1604 – German astronomer Johannes Kepler observed an exceptionally bright star, now known as Kepler's Supernova, which had suddenly appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus.
- 1940 – The body of Willi Münzenberg, a communist who was the leading propagandist for the Communist Party of Germany, was found near Saint-Marcellin.
- 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.
- 2001 – Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Ze'evi was assassinated in revenge for the targeted killing of the PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa.
- 2010 – Mary MacKillop was canonised to become the only Australian to be recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint.
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
October 17: Dessalines Day in Haiti (1806)
Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, Australia
- 1346 – King David II of Scotland, under the terms of the Auld Alliance with France, led an invasion of England during the Hundred Years' War, but was captured in the Battle of Neville's Cross.
- 1660 – A series of executions concluded, where of the fifty-nine commissioners who signed the death warrant for Charles I of England, nine were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason.
- 1931 – American gangster Al Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion.
- 1964 – Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies opened the artificial Lake Burley Griffin (pictured) in the middle of the capital Canberra.
- 2000 – A rail accident at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK, caused the collapse of Railtrack and the introduction of widespread speed limit reductions throughout the rail network.
Beatrice of Falkenburg (d. 1277) · Herbert Howells (b. 1892) · Malak Hifni Nasif (d. 1918)
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