Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 17
December 17: National Day in Bhutan (1907).
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
- 1903 – In Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA, Orville and Wilbur Wright aboard the Wright Flyer (pictured) conducted the first successful flight of a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
- 1944 – Malmedy massacre: Nazi German troops under Joachim Peiper killed unarmed prisoners of war, captured during the Battle of the Bulge, with machine guns near Malmedy, Belgium.
- 1970 – Soldiers fired at workers emerging from trains in Gdynia, Poland, beginning the government's brutal crackdown on mass anti-communist protests across the country.
- 1983 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a car bomb just outside Harrods Department Store in London, killing six people and injuring about 90 others.
More anniversaries: