On this day in History - Jan. 17

• 395 - Teodosio I el Grande, fallecimiento de, emperador romano de Oriente (379-395) y de Occidente (394-395).
• 1501 -Leonhard Fuchs was born [died 10 May 1566]. German botanist and physician whose botanical work Historia Stirpium (1542) is a landmark in the development of natural history.
• 1504 - Pope Pius V was born, (d. 1572).
• 1560 - Gaspard Bauhin, was born, botanist (d. 1624) .
• 1562 - France recognized the Huguenots under the Edict of St. Germain.
• 1584 -Bohemia adopts the Gregorian calendar .
• 1595 - French king Henri IV declares war on Spain .
• 1600 - Pedro Calderón de la Barca, nacimiento de, dramaturgo español perteneciente al barroco literario, autor de "La Vida es Sueño".
• 1620 - Diego Alvarez de Paz Spanish missionary/writer (Peru), dies at about 59.
• 1706 -Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston [d. 17 Apr 1790]; American Statesman, printer, scientist, and writer.He become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories.
• 1746 - Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", defeats a Hanoverian army at Falkirk in his ultimately unsuccessful campaign to recover the throne for the Jacobite dynasty.
• 1751 - Tomaso Albinoni, dies, Italian composer (b. 1671) .
• 1763 - John Jacob Astor, was born, entrepreneur (d. 1848) .
• 1773 - Captain James Cook becomes the first explorer to cross the Antarctic Circle.
• 1781 - Continental troops under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina.
• 1793 - A Convenção Francesa decide por um voto de diferença, com 361 a favor e 360 contra, a pena de morte do Rei Luis XVI.
• 1806 -James Madison Randolph, the grandson of Thomas Jefferson, became the first child born in the White House.
• 1819 - Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Colombia.
• 1834 -August Weismann was born [d. 5 Nov 1914]. A German biologist and one of the founders of the science of genetics, who is best known for his opposition to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired traits and for his "germ plasm" theory, the forerunner of DNA theory.
• 1852 - United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal.
• 1856 - Charles V. Chapin was born, [d.31 Jan 1941]; American physician and epidemiologist who, with Gardner T. Swarts, established the first municipal bacteriological laboratory in the U.S. (1888) in Providence, Rhode Island.
• 1858 - Tomas Carrasquilla, nacimiento de, Colombian author (Frutos de mi Tierra) .
• 1860 - Douglas Hyde, was born , President of Ireland .
• 1860 - Anton Chekhov, was born , playwright (d. 1904) .
• 1863- David Lloyd George, was born ,Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1945) .
• 1873- First Battle of the Stronghold in the US Modoc War.
• 1875 - Florencio Sánchez, nacimiento de, dramaturgo uruguayo.
• 1885 - A British force defeats a large Dervish army at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan.
• 1886 -Glenn Luther Martin was born [d. 4 Dec 1955]. American airplane inventor whose bombers and flying boats played important roles in WW II .
• 1890 -Peter Henderson dies [b. 17 Jan 1890]. Scottish-American scientist, known as the "Father of American Horticulture".
• 1893 - American sugar planters led by the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety overthrow the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
• 1893 - Rutherford B. Hayes, dies, 19th President of the United States (b. 1822)
• 1893 -Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate by a group of planters and businessmen.
• 1899 - The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.
• 1899 - Al Capone, was born, gangster, nicknamed "Scarface" (d. 1947) .
• 1899 - Robert Maynard Hutchins was born, educator.
• 1910 - Joaquim Nabuco, morte de, diplomata, político, jornalista, historiador e literato brasileiro (n. 1849).
• 1911 -Sir Francis Galton dies [b. 16 Feb 1822]; English scientist, explorer, anthropologist, statistician and eugenicist, known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence.
• 1912 - Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.
• 1913 - Raymond Poincaré elected President of France.
• 1917- The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
• 1920 - Nora Kaye was born,ballerina.
• 1929 - Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, first appeared in a newspaper comic strip.
• 1931 - James Earl Jones was born, actor.
• 1933 - O Congresso dos Estados Unidos vota a favor da independência das Filipinas.
• 1941 - José Leite de Vasconcelos dies, Portuguese scholar (Etnografia), dies at 82.
• 1942 -Muhammad Ali was born ,boxer.
• 1944 - Françoise Hardy, was born, French singer .
• 1945 - Soviet forces do the liberation of the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw (end of Nazi occupation).
• 1945 - The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in.
• 1945 -Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody.
• 1946 - The UN Security Council holds its first session.
• 1949 - The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, airs.
• 1950 - The Great Brinks Robbery - 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1952 Ryuichi Sakamoto was born , Japan, rocker (Academy Award 1988, Yellow Magic Orchestra) .
• 1952- Habib Bourguiba, Tunisian nationalist, is arrested by French authorities.
• 1954 - Milovan Djilas, presidente da Assembléia Federal e vice-presidente da República da Iugoslávia, é destituído de seus cargos.
• 1956 - Paul Young, was born, English musician (Every Time You Go Away) .
• 1957 - Suzanne Danielle, was born, English actress.
• 1961 - Maia Chiburdanidze Kutaisi was born, USSR, women's world chess champ.
• 1961 - Assassinato em Katanga do dirigente do Congo, Patricio Lumumba, um dos principais nomes da Independência do país.
• 1962 - Monserrat Caballé estréia no Grand Teatro de Barcelona.
• 1962 - Jim Carrey, actor, was born, comedian .
• 1966 - Simon and Garfunkel release their second album, Sounds of Silence, on Columbia Records.
• 1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
• 1973 - Ferdinand Marcos becomes "President for Life" of the Philippines.
• 1975 - Bob Dylan releases Blood on the Tracks, often considered one of his best albums.
• 1977- Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on the death penalty in the United States.
• 1982 - "Cold Sunday" in the United States sees temperatures fall to their lowest levels in over 100 years in numerous cities.
• 1982 - O desabamento de uma ponte pênsil sobre o salto de Sete Quedas, no Paraná, provoca a morte de 29 pessoas. Cerca de mil turistas ficam isolados e são resgatados por helicópteros.
• 1983 - A Nigéria expulsa dois milhões de imigrantes ilegais vindos de Gana.
• 1984 - Abertura, em Estocolmo, da Conferência sobre Desarme na Europa, em que participaram representantes de 35 países.
• 1985 - British Telecom announces the retirement of Britain's famous red telephone boxes.
• 1986 - Se firma en La Haya, el protocolo que establece relaciones diplomáticas entre Israel y España.
• 1987 - 50 pessoas desaparecem após o naufrágio de um navio, perto da ilha de Bohol, nas Filipinas.
• 1991 - Gulf War: Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
• 1991 - Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V.
• 1991 -Operation Desert Storm was launched against Iraq.
• 1991 - King Olav V of Norway dies (b. 1903)
• 1992 - Punk rock band Green Day releases their second full-length album, Kerplunk.
• 1994 - 6.6 Earthquake hits Los Angeles killing 60.
• 1995 - A magnitude 7.3 earthquake called "the Great Hanshin earthquake" occurrs near Kobe, Japan, causing great property damage and killing over 6,400 people.
• 1995 - Miguel Torga, morte deste poeta, ficcionista e ensaísta português [n. 1907] .
• 1996 - The Czech Republic applies for membership of the European Union.
• 1996 - O ex-primeiro ministro da Itália, Silvio Berlusconi, vai a julgamento por acusações de corrupção alegadas por seus oponentes políticos.
• 1997 - Um tribunal na Irlanda concede o primeiro divórcio na história do país.
• 1997 -Clyde W. Tombaugh dies [b. 4 Feb 1906]. American astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto in 1930, the only planet discovered in the twentieth century.
• 1998 - Paula Jones accuses President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment.
• 1998 -President Clinton became the first sitting U.S. president to testify as a defendant in a criminal or civil suit.
• 2000 - British pharmaceutical firms Glaxo Wellcome PLC and SmithKline Beecham PLC announce a merger to form the world's largest drug maker .
• 2001 -Gov. Gray Davis declared a state of emergency concerning California's electricity crisis.
• 2002 - Camilo Jose Cela, dies [b.1916], Spanish author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1989.
• 2002 - Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.