Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 17
This is a list of selected February 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.
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
-
Giordano Bruno—See Giordano Bruno#A note on the Bruno "portraits": "Its authenticity is doubtful". -
London congestion charging, outbound sign -
Thomas Jefferson -
Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, collectively known as Gomburza
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Tanis Diena | tagged with {{disputed}} |
| 1819 – The United States House of Representatives passed the Missouri Compromise. | refimprove |
| 1854 – Britain recognized the independence of the Orange Free State in the present-day Free State Province, South Africa. | refimprove |
| 1933 – The American weekly news magazine Newsweek was first published. | expand, unreferenced section |
| 1936 – The Phantom, one of the first modern comic book superheroes with the hallmark skintight costume and a mask with no visible pupils, made his first appearance in a daily newspaper comic strip. | unreferenced section |
| 1944 – World War II: The United States Navy began Operation Hailstone, a massive naval air and surface attack against the Japanese naval and air base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. | no footnotes |
| 1959 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to measure cloud cover distribution. | Tagged with {{refimprove}}, {{lead too short}} |
| 1979 – About 120,000 troops of the People's Liberation Army of China crossed into northern Vietnam, starting the Sino-Vietnamese War. | Tagged with {{POV}}, {{refimprove}} |
| 1995 – In the presence of the four guarantor countries of the Rio Protocol, Ecuador and Peru signed a peace declaration confirming a ceasefire, leading to the official end of the Cenepa War eleven days later. | {{refimprove}} |
Eligible
- 1621 – Myles Standish was elected as the first commander of the Plymouth Colony militia, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.
- 1801 – The U.S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson (pictured) as President and Aaron Burr as Vice President, resolving an electoral tie in the 1800 U.S. presidential election.
- 1872 – Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, collectively known as Gomburza, were executed in Manila, Philippines, by Spanish colonial authorities on charges of subversion arising from the 1872 Cavite mutiny.
- 1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan, generating negative reviews that forced him to rewrite the opera.
- 1964 – Gabonese military officers overthrew President Léon M'ba, but France, honoring a 1960 treaty, forcibly reinstated M'ba the next day.
- 2003 – The London congestion charge, a fee that is levied on motorists travelling within designated parts of Central London, came into operation.
- 2011 – Bahrain security forces launched a pre-dawn raid on protesters in Pearl Roundabout in Manama, killing four of them.
Notes
- 2011–2012 Bahraini uprising appears on February 14, so Bloody Thursday (2011) should not be used in the same year.
February 17: Independence Day in Kosovo (2008)
- 1600 – Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, best-known as a proponent of heliocentrism and the infinity of the universe, was burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition.
- 1859 – The French Navy captured the Citadel of Saigon, a fortress that was manned by 1,000 Nguyễn Dynasty soldiers, en route to conquering Saigon and other regions of southern Vietnam.
- 1865 – American Civil War: The Union Army captured Columbia, South Carolina and began burning it to the ground.
- 1913 – In the U.S. National Guard's 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, the Armory Show opened, introducing Americans to avant-garde and modern art.
- 2006 – A massive landslide (damage pictured) in the Philippine province of Southern Leyte killed over 1,000 people.