17 March History
- 1766 - Britain repeals the Stamp Act.
- 1776 - British forces evacuate from Boston to Nova Scotia.
- 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte and his army reach Mediterranean seaport of St. Jean d'Acra, only to find British warships ready to break his siege of the town.
- 1868 - The first postage stamp canceling machine patent is issued.
- 1884 - John Joseph Montgomery makes the first glider flight in Otay, Calif.
- 1886 - Twenty African Americans are killed in the Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi.
- 1891 - The British steamer Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar.
- 1905 - Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, marries Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York.
- 1910 - The Camp Fire Girls are founded in Lake Sebago, Maine.
- 1914 - Russia increases the number of active duty military from 460,000 to 1,700,000.
- 1924 - Four Douglas army aircraft leave Los Angeles for an around the world flight.
- 1930 - Mob boss Al Capone is released from jail.
- 1942 - The Nazis begin deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
- 1944 - The U.S. Eighth Air Force bombs Vienna.
- 1959 - The Dalai Lama flees Tibet and goes to India.
- 1961 - The United States increases military aid and technicians to Laos.
- 1962 - The Soviet Union asks the United States to pull out of South Vietnam.
- 1966 - A U.S. submarine locates a missing H-bomb in the Mediterranean.
- 1970 - The Army charges 14 officers with suppression of facts in the My Lai massacre case.
- 1972 - Nixon asks Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
- 1973 - Twenty are killed in Cambodia when a bomb goes off that was meant for the Cambodian President Lon Nol.
- 1973 - First POWs are released from the "Hanoi Hilton" in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
- 1985 - President Ronald Reagan agrees to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.
- 1992 - White South Africans approve constitutional reforms giving legal equality to blacks.
17 March Birthdays
- c.389 - St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
- 1828 - Patrick R. Cleburne, Confederate general.
- 1832 - Daniel Conway Moncure, U.S. clergyman, author, abolitionist
- 1846 - Kate Greenway, painter and illustrator (Mother Goose).
- 1902 - Bobby Jones, American golfer.
- 1919 - Nat "King" Cole, American jazz pianist and singer.