17 November History
- 375 - Enraged by the insolence of barbarian envoys, Valentinian, the Emperor of the West, dies of apoplexy in Pannonia in Central Europe.
- 1558 - Queen Elizabeth ascends to the throne of England.
- 1558 - The Church of England is re-established.
- 1636 - Henrique Dias, Brazilian general, wins a decisive battle against the Dutch in Brazil.
- 1796 - Napoleon Bonaparte defeats an Italian army near the Alpone River, Italy.
- 1800 - The Sixth Congress (2nd session) convenes for the first time in Washington, D.C.
- 1842 - A grim abolitionist meeting is held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the imprisonment of a mulatto named George Latimer, one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended in Massachusetts.
- 1862 - Union General Ambrose Burnside marches north out of Washington, D.C., to begin the Fredericksburg campaign.
- 1869 - The Suez Canal is formally opened.
- 1877 - Russia launches a surprise night attack that overruns Turkish forces at Kars, Armenia.
- 1885 - The Serbian Army, with Russian support, invades Bulgaria.
- 1903 - Vladimir Lenin's efforts to impose his own radical views on the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits the party into two factions, the Bolsheviks, who support Lenin, and the Mensheviks.
- 1913 - The first ship sails through the Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
- 1918 - Influenza deaths reported in the United States have far exceeded World War I casualties.
- 1918 - German troops evacuate Brussels.
- 1931 - Charles Lindbergh inaugurates Pan Am service from Cuba to South America in the Sikorsky flying boat American Clipper.
- 1941 - German Luftwaffe general and World War I fighter-ace Ernst Udet commits suicide. The Nazi government tells the public that he died in a flying accident.
- 1951 - Britain reports development of the world's first nuclear-powered heating system.
- 1965 - The NVA ambushes American troops of the 7th Cavalry at Landing Zone Albany in the Ia Drang Valley, almost wiping them out.
- 1967 - The American Surveyor 6 makes a six-second flight on the moon, the first liftoff on the lunar surface.
- 1970 - Soviet unmanned Luna 17 touches down on the moon.
- 1980 - WHHM Television in Washington, D.C., becomes the first African-American public-broadcasting television station.
- 1986 - Renault President Georges Besse is shot to death by leftists of the Direct Action Group in Paris.
17 November Birthdays
- 1755 - Louis XVIII, King of France.
- 1887 - Bernard Law Montgomery, British field marshal who defeated Rommel in North Africa and led Allied troops from D-Day to the end of World War II.
- 1902 - Eugene Paul Wigner, Hungarian-born physicist.
- 1916 - Shelby Foote, American writer, famous for his three-volume narrative on America's Civil War.
- 1942 - Martin Scorsese, film director (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull)