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“He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
Wikiquote (Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) an American inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman. - See also: Poor Richard's Almanack (1733–1758))
January 17th, 38 BC
Roman Empire:
38 BC - Octavian divorces his wife Scribonia and marries Livia Drusilla, ending the fragile peace between the Second Triumvirate and Sextus Pompey.
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
January 17th, 395
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
395 - Emperor Theodosius I dies in Milan, the Roman Empire is re-divided into an eastern and a western half. The Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire) is centered in Constantinople under Arcadius, son of Theodosius, and the Western Roman Empire in Mediolanum under Honorius, his brother (aged 10).
Wikipedia Image: The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace); Mural of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan Monastery, Bulgaria; Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna; The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine Navy during the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from the Madrid Skylitzes, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid); Alexios I, founder of the Komnenos dynasty.
January 17th, 1287
King Alfonso III of Aragon invades Minorca.
Wikipedia Photo: Minorca - Cap de Cavalleria (The Cap lighthouse from cavalry, steep - to on the sea), credit Matteo Ferrari.
January 17th, 1377
Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon.
Wikipedia Painting: Catherine of Siena escorted pope Gregory XI at Rome on 17th January 1377.
January 17th, 1524
Giovanni da Verrazzano sets sail westward from Madeira to find a sea route to the Pacific Ocean.
Wikipedia Painting: Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528) was an Italian explorer of North America, in the service of the French crown.
January 17th, 1562
French Wars of Religion:
France recognizes the Huguenots under the Edict of Saint-Germain.
Wikipedia Painting: The French Wars of Religion; (1562–98): Period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots). (The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise (Lorraine), and both sides received assistance from foreign sources).
● Depiction of the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre by François Dubois.
● Armed procession of the Catholic League in Paris in 1590, Musée Carnavalet.
● Catherine de' Medici One morning at the gates of the Louvre, 19th-century painting by Édouard Debat-Ponsan.
January 17th, 1595
Henry IV of France declares war on Spain.
Wikipedia Image: Western Europe Satellite, credit NASA.
January 17th, 1608
Ethiopia:
Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia surprises an Oromo army at Ebenat; his army reportedly kills 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 men.
Wikipedia Photo: Blue Nile Falls; Ethiopia a magical and timeless land; credit Oklahoma State University, University of California - San Diego School of Medicine, National Geographics.
January 17th, 1648
English Civil War:
1648 - England's Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War.
Wikipedia Painting: English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers);
John Milton publishes Areopagitica;
Battle of Naseby, victory of the Parliamentarian New Model Army;
Battle of Marston Moor, 1644;
"Cromwell at Dunbar", by Andrew Carrick Gow; Oliver Cromwell; King Charles I, painted by Van Dyck;
"And when did you last see your father?" by William Frederick Yeames.
January 17th, 1773
British Captain James Cook and his crew become the first Europeans to sail below the Antarctic Circle.
Wikipedia Painting: James Cook, portrait by Nathaniel Dance-Holland, c. 1775, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; British explorer James Cook's ship was named the HMS Endeavour; Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth, credit National Library of Australia (NLA) digital collections; Captain James Cook (1728-1779) is shown meeting Nootka leader Muquinna (died 1798) at Nootka Sound on what is now Vancouver Island, in 1778, during his explorations of Canada’s northwest coast, credit Canadian Military History.
January 17th, 1781
American Revolutionary War:
1781 - The Battle of Cowpens; Continental troops under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the battle in South Carolina.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
Painting: Battle of Cape Saint Vincent, by Thomas Buttersworth (1768-1842).
January 17th, 1811
Mexican War of Independence: Battle of Calderón Bridge;, a heavily outnumbered Spanish force of 6,000 troops defeats nearly 100,000 Mexican revolutionaries.
Wikipedia Painting: Mexican War of Independence
January 17th, 1873
American Indian Wars:
1873 - Modoc War; First Battle of the Stronghold - a group of Modoc warriors defeats the United States Army.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
January 17th, 1893
Kingdom of Hawaii: The Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston, overthrows the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Wikipedia Hawaiian Islands, NOAA Satellite; Na Pali Coast, Kaua'i, by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, National Geographic; Volcanic Coast, Haleakala National Park, by Paul Chesley, National Geographic; Living Earth - Pu'u 'O'o crater, by Frans Lanting; Volcano erupting on the Big Island in Hawaii in July by Alain Barbezat for National Geographic; The blue ocean line of Honolulu - an aerial view.
Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiian: Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) from the island of Hawaiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll (the northwesternmost island in Hawaii is Green Island, which is joined to the Kure Atoll).
January 17th, 1899
United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.
Wikipedia Photo: Wake Island coral atoll in the mid-Pacific.
January 17th, 1903
El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico becomes part of the United States National Forest System as the Luquillo Forest Reserve.
Wikipedia Photo: El Yunque National Forest, is a forest located in northeastern Puerto Rico (It is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Forest System); Lizard on a Leaf, by Brian Stinga, National Geographics; Puerto Rican Parrots, rare birds in the forest.
January 17th, 1912
Antarctica:
1912 - Captain Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.
Wikipedia Photo: Antarctica (8/30/2012), credit National Geographic; Infrared satellite image of Antarctica, credit © Visual Photos.
January 17th, 1917
The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
Wikipedia Photo: Part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the island of St. John incorporates both a land-based national park and a sea-based national monument (First established in 1956 and later expanded by the U.S. Congress, the Virgin Islands National Park covers more than 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) - Coral Reef National Monument—established ten years ago this week by presidential proclamation—encompasses submerged lands within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of the St. John coast), credit Earth Observatory NASA.
January 17th, 1918
Post World War I:
1918 - Finnish Civil War; The first serious battles take place between the Red Guards and the White Guard.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
January 17th, 1929
Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
Wikipedia Drawing: Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television.
January 17th, 1941
World War II:
1941 - Franco-Thai War; Battle of Ko Chang - French forces inflict a decisive defeat over the Royal Thai Navy.
1944 - Battle of Monte Cassino; Allied forces launch the first of four battles with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome, an effort that would ultimately take four months and cost 105,000 Allied casualties.
1945 - Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw forces launch the first of four battles with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome, an effort that would ultimately take four months and cost 105,000 Allied casualties.
1945 - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is taken into Soviet custody while in Hungary; he is never publicly seen again.
Post World War II:
1946 - United Nations Security Council holds its first session.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
January 17th, 1945
World War II: Holocaust;
1945 - The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in.
Wikipedia Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.
January 17th, 1950
The Great Brinks Robbery 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car Company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts.
Wikipedia Photo: The Great Brinks Robbery - Sisal bags and truck parts found at the dump in Stougnton in March 1950; Captain Marvel, Jr.; Captain Marvel; Stanley Albert Gusciora; Joseph Sylvester Banfield, credit FBI.
January 17th, 1961
1941 - United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex" 
.
Wikipedia Photo: Dwight D. Eisenhower (June 4, 1956) courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.
January 17th, 1966
Palomares incident: a B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
Wikipedia Photo: The 1966 Palomares B-52 crash or Palomares incident occurred on January 17, 1966, when a B-52G bomber of the USAF Strategic Air Command collided with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refuelling at 31,000 feet (9,450 m) over the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain.
January 17th, 1977
Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on capital punishment in the United States.
Wikipedia Photo: Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American who gained international notoriety for demanding that his own death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah. He became the first person executed in the United States after the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia
January 17th, 1991
Gulf War - Iraq War:
1991 - Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.
January 17th, 1994
Earthquake:
1994 - Northridge earthquake; a magnitude 6.7 earthquake hits Northridge, California.
1995 - The Great Hanshin earthquake; a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hits near Kobe, Japan, causing extensive property damage and killing 6,434 people.
2002 - Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
January 17th, 1998
Monica Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the story of the Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky affair on his website The Drudge Report.
Wikipedia Photo: Monica Lewinsky scandal, Time Cover Story "If it were not for Monica Lewinsky, I think we would have Social Security ..."
January 17th, 2007
The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea nuclear testing.
Wikipedia Photo: The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face, maintained since 1947 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago.
January 17th, 1972
Aviation accidents and incidents:
1972 - British Airways Flight 38; crash lands just short of London Heathrow Airport in England with no fatalities. It is the first complete hull loss of a Boeing 777.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
January 17th, 2010
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2010 - Jos Riots (2010): Riots begins between Muslim and Christian groups in Jos, Nigeria, resulting in at least 200 deaths.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)