17 February History
- 1454 - At a grand feast, Philip the Good of Burgundy takes the "vow of the pheasant," by which he swears to fight the Turks.
- 1598 - Boris Godunov, the boyar of Tarar origin, is elected czar in succession to his brother-in-law Fydor.
- 1720 - Spain signs the Treaty of the Hague with the Quadruple Alliance ending a war that was begun in 1718.
- 1801 - The House of Representatives breaks an electoral college tie and chooses Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr.
- 1864 - The Confederate submarine Hunley sinks the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
- 1865 - The South Carolina capital city, Columbia, is destroyed by fire as Major General William Tecumseh Sherman marches through.
- 1909 - Apache chief Geronimo dies of pneumonia at age 80, while still in captivity at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
- 1919 - Germany signs an armistice giving up territory in Poland.
- 1925 - The first issue of Harold Ross' magazine, The New Yorker, hits the stands, selling for 15 cents a copy.
- 1933 - The League of Nations censures Japan in a worldwide broadcast.
- 1935 - Thirty-one prisoners escape an Oklahoma prison after murdering a guard.
- 1938 - The first color television is demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London.
- 1944 - U.S forces land on Eniwetok atoll in the South Pacific.
- 1945 - Gen. MacArthur's troops land on Corregidor in the Philippines.
- 1951 - Packard introduces its "250" Chassis Convertible.
- 1955 - Britain announces its ability to make hydrogen bombs.
- 1959 - The United States launches its first weather station in space, Vanguard II.
- 1960 - Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested in the Alabama bus boycott.
- 1963 - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visits the Berlin Wall.
- 1969 - Russia and Peru sign their first trade accord.
- 1973 - President Richard Nixon names Patrick Gray director of the FBI.
- 1975 - Art by Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, and van Gough, valued at $5 million, is stolen from the Municipal Museum in Milan.
- 1979 - China begins a "pedagogical" war against Vietnam. It will last until March.
- 1985 - Murray Haydon becomes the third person to receive an artificial heart.
17 February Birthdays
- 1774 - Raphaelle Peale, U.S. painter
- 1864 - A (ndrew) B (arton) "Banjo" Paterson, Australian poet and journalist.
- 1874 - Thomas J. Watson Sr., U.S. industrialist.
- 1902 - Marian Anderson, American singer.
- 1908 - Walter Lanier "Red" Barber, baseball announcer for the Cincinnati Reds, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
- 1929 - Chaim Potok, novelist (The Chosen, The Promise).
- 1963 - Michael Jordan, basketball player for the Chicago Bulls.