17 March History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.