| YEAR | DAY | EVENT |
| 352 | May 17 | Liberius began his reign as Catholic Pope replacing Julius I. |
| 884 | May 17 | St. Adrian III began his reign as Catholic Pope. |
| 1510 | May 17 | Sandro Botticelli (b.1445), Florentine artist born as Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, died. |
| 1525 | May 17 | Battle at Zabern: duke of Lutherans beat rebels. |
| 1536 | May 17 | Anne Boleyn’s 4 “lovers” were executed. |
| 1540 | May 17 | Afghan chief Sher Khan defeated Mongol Emperor Humayun at Kanauj. |
| 1544 | May 17 | Scot earl Matthew van Lennox signed a secret treaty with Henry VIII. |
| 1620 | May 17 | The 1st merry-go-round was seen at a fair in Philippapolis, Turkey. |
| 1630 | May 17 | Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi saw the belts on Jupiter’s surface. |
| 1631 | May 17 | Earl Johann Tilly attacked Magdeburg. |
| 1642 | May 17 | Paul de Chomedy de Maisonneuve landed on the Island of Montreal and gave the name Ville-Marie to the town he constructed at the foot of Mont Royal. |
| 1672 | May 17 | Frontenac became governor of New France (Canada). |
| 1673 | May 17 | Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi. |
| 1681 | May 17 | Louis XIV sent an expedition to aid James II in Ireland. As a result, England declared war on France. |
| 1727 | May 17 | Catherine I (b.1683), Empress of Russia (1725-27), died. |
| 1733 | May 17 | England passed the Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions. |
| 1742 | May 17 | Frederick great (Emperor of Prussia) beat Austrians. |
| 1749 | May 17 | Edward Jenner, physician, discoverer of vaccination, was born. |
| 1756 | May 17 | After a year and a half of undeclared war Britain declared war on France, beginning the French and Indian War and England hoped to conquer Canada. The final defeat of the French came in 1763 with the British victory at the Battle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham. |
| 1803 | May 17 | John Hawkins and Richard French patented a reaping machine. |
| 1809 | May 17 | The Papal States were annexed by France. Pope Pius VII responded by excommunicating Napoleon. |
| 1814 | May 17 | Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden. Norway’s constitution was signed, providing for a limited monarchy. |
| 1836 | May 17 | Joseph Norman Lockyer, discovered helium, was born. He founded Nature magazine. |
| 1838 | May 17 | Charles-Maurice duke of Talleyrand-Perigord (84), diplomat, revolutionary, bishop and former PM of France (1815), died. In 2006 David Lawday authored “Napoleon’s Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand.” |
| 1845 | May 17 | The rubber band was patented. |
| 1849 | May 17 | A fire in St. Louis, Mo., destroyed more than 400 buildings and two dozen steamships. |
| 1863 | May 17 | Union General Ulysses Grant continued his push towards Vicksburg at the Battle of the Big Black River Bridge in Mississippi. |
| 1864 | May 17 | The Battle of Adairsville, Georgia, resulted in a Confederate retreat. |
| 1865 | May 17 | The International Telegraph Union, later the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was set up in Paris to standardize and regulate international radio communications. |
| 1866 | May 17 | Erik Alfred Leslie Satie, French composer, was born. |
| 1871 | May 17 | Gen. Sherman, Indian fighter, escaped in ambulance from the Comanches. |
| 1875 | May 17 | The first Kentucky Derby was run at Louisville; the winner was Aristides. It later became part of the Triple Crown with the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness. |
| 1876 | May 17 | The 7th US Cavalry under Custer left Ft. Lincoln. |
| 1881 | May 17 | Frederick Douglass was appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C. |
| 1883 | May 17 | Lydia Estes Pinkham, patent-medicine manufacturer, died. |
| 1884 | May 17 | Alaska became a US territory. |
| 1900 | May 17 | Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (d.1989), Iran’s spiritual and revolutionary leader (1979-89), was born. |
| 1903 | May 17 | James “Cool Papa” Bell, baseball player, was born. |
| 1904 | May 17 | Jean Gabin, one of France’s most popular film actors, was born in Paris. |
| 1906 | May 17 | Opera singer Zinka Milanov was born in Zagreb, Croatia. |
| 1909 | May 17 | White firemen on Georgia RR struck to protest the hiring of blacks. |
| 1912 | May 17 | Archibald Cox was born. He was the special prosecutor in the Watergate hearings who was fired by President Richard Nixon. |
| 1915 | May 17 | The National Baptist Convention was chartered. |
| 1918 | May 17 | Birgit Nilsson, operatic soprano (Isolde, Turandot, Elektra, Salome), was born in Karup, Sweden. |
| 1921 | May 17 | Pres. Harding opened the 1st Valencia Orange Show via telephone. |
| 1924 | May 17 | In Santa Cruz, Ca., the Giant Dipper roller coaster opened to the public. It was built by local resident Arthur Looff. It cost $50,000 and took 47 days to construct. It was declared a Historic Landmark in 1987. |
| 1926 | May 17 | Chiang Kai-shek was made supreme war lord and “generalissimo” in Canton. |
| 1929 | May 17 | Edsel Ford cut the first sod of Ford’s new British manufacturing plant in the Dagenham marshes. The first cars at Dagenham were produced in October, 1931. This was Ford’s first expansion outside the US. |
| 1930 | May 17 | Herbert Croly (b.1869), American liberal political author, died. His books included “The Promise of American Life” (1909). |
| 1932 | May 17 | Congress changed the name “Porto Rico” to “Puerto Rico”. |
| 1936 | May 17 | Dennis Hopper, actor (True Grit, Blue Velvet, Easy Rider), was born in Kansas. |
| 1938 | May 17 | Congress passed the Vinson Naval Act, providing for a strengthened US Navy. |
| 1939 | May 17 | Britain’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrived in Quebec on the first visit to Canada by reigning British sovereigns. |
| 1940 | May 17 | Germany occupied Brussels, Belgium, and began the invasion of France. |
| 1942 | May 17 | Dutch SS vowed loyalty to Hitler. |
| 1944 | May 17 | D. du Toit (Harvard College Observatory, Boyden station, Bloemfontein, South Africa) discovered the comet, 66P/du Toit, on a photograph. |
| 1946 | May 17 | President Truman seized control of the nation’s railroads, delaying ”” but not preventing ”” a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen. |
| 1948 | May 17 | The Soviet Union recognized the new state of Israel. |
| 1949 | May 17 | The British House of Commons adopted the Ireland Bill that recognized the independence of the Republic of Ireland, but affirmed the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. |
| 1954 | May 17 | In Romania Monsignor Vladimir Ghika (b.1873) died in Jilava Communist prison. He had been born into a family of Moldovan nobles in Constantinople and spent decades traveling around the world helping the sick and the poor. On Aug 31, 2013, he was beatified. |
| 1956 | May 17 | Sugar Ray [Charles] Leonard, boxer (Olympics-gold-76) was born in Willington, SC. |
| 1960 | May 17 | Connecticut executed Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky in the electric chair for a series of murders and robberies. |
| 1961 | May 17 | Cuban leader Fidel Castro offered to exchange prisoners captured in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion for 500 bulldozers. |
| 1964 | May 17 | In San Francisco thousands gathered in Golden Gate park to rally against a proposal for a Panhandle Freeway. |
| 1966 | May 17 | A North Vietnamese interview with US Adm. Jeremiah Denton (1924-2014) was broadcast on US TV. He had been shot down over North Vietnam in 1965. Denton used his eyes to blink out T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code. This was the first confirmation that American POWs were being tortured. |
| 1968 | May 17 | In Maryland the Catonsville Nine including Daniel and Phillip Berrigan (1921-2002), a Catholic priest, took hundreds of files from the draft board at the Knights of Columbus building and set them on fire with gasoline and soap chips. |
| 1970 | May 17 | Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002), Norwegian anthropologist, left Morocco aboard Ra II, a papyrus reed boat, and sailed 3,270 nautical miles across the Atlantic to Barbados in 57 days |
| 1971 | May 17 | The musical “Godspell,” by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak, premiered off-Broadway. |
| 1973 | May 17 | The US Senate began its televised hearings into the Watergate scandal and the role of Pres. Nixon. |
| 1974 | May 17 | LA police and FBI agents engaged in a gun battle with SLA members in a bungalow. The house caught fire and 6 bodies were recovered that included Cinque and William Wolfe. Patty Hearst was not there. |
| 1975 | May 17 | NBC paid $5M for rights to show “Gone with the Wind” one time. The film aired over 2 nights in November, 1976. |
| 1977 | May 17 | Menachem Begin’s Likud-party won election in Israel. |
| 1978 | May 17 | Women were included in the White House honor guard for the first time as President Carter welcomed Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. |
| 1980 | May 17 | Rioting that claimed 18 lives erupted in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. |
| 1981 | May 17 | SF celebrated “Tillie Olsen Day.” Her books included “Yonnondio” (1974), and “Silences,” a study of blocked creativity. In 2001 she received the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award. |
| 1984 | May 17 | A federal bailout of $4.5 billion kept the Continental Illinois Bank afloat. The 7th biggest US bank’s loss of half its funds overnight led to America’s return to strict capital requirements. Fed chairman Paul Volcker lent $8 billion through the discount window and endorsed the bailout of uninsured depositors. CIB was later sold to BankAmerica. |
| 1987 | May 17 | An Iraqi warplane attacked the US Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf and 37 American sailors were killed. Iraq and the United States called the attack a mistake |
| 1988 | May 17 | The US Commerce Department reported that a record level of export sales gave the US its lowest monthly trade deficit in three years in March 1988, totaling $9.7 billion. |
| 1989 | May 17 | Robert Webber (b.1924), actor (Nuts, SOB, Assassin, 10), died in California. |
| 1990 | May 17 | The effective date for pension rights for both men and women as ruled by a European court in 1994. |
| 1991 | May 17 | The Commerce Department reported the US trade deficit had narrowed sharply in March 1991 to $4.05 billion, the lowest level in nearly eight years. |
| 1992 | May 17 | Pro-democracy protests began in Thailand; in four days of clashes with troops, 44 people reportedly were killed, although activists charged that hundreds died. |
| 1993 | May 17 | President Clinton visited the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb to promote a five-year, $20 billion defense-conversion plan. |
| 1994 | May 17 | The U.N. Security Council approved a peacekeeping force and an arms embargo for violence-racked Rwanda. By June, 1994, 800,000 died there despite the presence of a small UN mission |
| 1995 | May 17 | The US Senate ethics committee concluded that Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) had to face a full-scale Senate investigation of charges that included making improper advances toward women. |
| 1996 | May 17 | D. Pipes reviewed “The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years” by Bernard Lewis. |
| 1997 | May 17 | Silver Charm won the Preakness, two weeks after winning the Kentucky Derby. However, he failed to win the Belmont Stakes. |
| 1998 | May 17 | New York Yankees pitcher David Wells became the 13th player in modern major league baseball history to throw a perfect game as he retired all 27 batters he faced in a 4-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins. |
| 1999 | May 17 | The US announced a 400,000 ton food aid donation to North Korea, as inspectors flew in to check on nuclear weapons development. |
| 2000 | May 17 | In the Dominican Republic Hipolito Mejia, the populist opposition leader, was on the verge of winning the election with enough votes to avoid a runoff. Danilo Medina of the incumbent Liberation party had 24.9% and Joaquin Balaguer had 24.6% for the Social Christian Reformist Party. |
| 2001 | May 17 | The US pledged $43 million in aid to Afghanistan. |
| 2002 | May 17 | Former President Jimmy Carter ended a historic visit to Cuba sharply at odds with the Bush administration over how to deal with Fidel Castro, saying limits on tourism and trade often hurt Americans more than Cubans. |
| 2003 | May 17 | Funny Cide ran away from the field in the Preakness, two weeks after winning the Kentucky Derby. However, Funny Cide came up short at the Belmont Stakes, finishing third. |
| 2004 | May 17 | Transsexuals were cleared to compete in the Olympics for the first time. |
| 2005 | May 17 | The US Department of Homeland Security said it detained Luis Posada Carriles, after the longtime Castro opponent granted interviews to TV stations and The Miami Herald for the first time since surfacing in the United States two months ago. |
| 2006 | May 17 | Pres. Bush signed tax cut legislation that substantially increased taxes on American working abroad in a provision that Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley included under Section 911 of the tax code. |
| 2007 | May 17 | President Bush and retiring British PM Tony Blair held a joint news conference at the White House, during which Blair allowed not a single regret about the Iraq war alliance. |
| 2008 | May 17 | This was the official release date by the US Mint for the Adams dollar coin, the 6th of its presidential dollar series. |
| 2009 | May 17 | In Indiana Pres. Obama addressed a graduation ceremony at Notre Dame Univ. and called for “open hearts, open minds and fair-minded words” in the pursuit of “common ground” regarding the issue of abortion rights. |
| 2010 | May 17 | The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven’t killed anyone. |
| 2011 | May 17 | Pres. Obama met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. They discussed the sweeping political and social changes in the Middle East. |
| 2012 | May 17 | The US Obama administration announced that it would ease the ban on investments in Myanmar. |
| 2013 | May 17 | A federal judge in Arkansas granted a request to temporarily block enforcement of a new state law that bans most abortions 12 weeks into a pregnancy. |
| 2014 | May 17 | Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed the first state law to allow terminally ill patients to access experimental medications before federal approval. |
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