Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 17
This is a list of selected May 17 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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New York Stock Exchange -
Main fragment of the Antikythera mechanism -
President Jacques Chirac of France -
Anne of Denmark in 1612 -
The sinking of the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany -
Dalia Grybauskaitė
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Constitution Day in Norway (1814); | refimprove |
| 1814 – The Constitution of Norway was signed and Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik was elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly. | refimprove |
| 1865 – The International Telecommunication Union, an international organization that standardizes and regulates international radio and telecommunications, was founded as the International Telegraph Union in Paris. | needs 3rd-party sources and more footnotes |
| 1875 – The American Thoroughbred racehorse Aristides won the first running of the Kentucky Derby. | refimprove |
| 1900 – Second Boer War: The Siege of Mafeking in South Africa was lifted after 217 days, a decisive victory for the British against the Boers. | needs more footnotes |
| 1992 – Three days of popular protests against the government of Prime Minister of Thailand Suchinda Kraprayoon began in Bangkok, leading to a military crackdown that resulted in 52 officially confirmed deaths, many disappearances, hundreds of injuries, and over 3,500 arrests. | unreferenced section |
| 2006 – The U.S. Navy deliberately sank the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, the largest vessel ever sunk to create an artificial reef. | unreferenced section |
Eligible
- 1590 – Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen consort of Scotland in the abbey church at Holyrood Palace.
- 1642 – The Société Notre-Dame de Montréal founded a permanent mission known as Ville-Marie, which eventually grew into the city of Montreal.
- 1902 – The Antikythera mechanism, the oldest known surviving geared mechanism, was discovered among artifacts retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.
- 1914 – Albania officially recognized the area of Northern Epirus as an autonomous region within the Albanian state, which was never established due to World War I.
- 1974 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force detonated a series of car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland, killing 33 people and injuring over 300 more.
- 1995 – After 18 years as Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac was inaugurated as President of France.
- 2004 – Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
Notes
- Plessy v. Ferguson appears on May 18, so Brown v. Board of Education should not appear in the same year
May 17: Galician Literature Day in Galicia, Spain
- 1521 – English nobleman Edward Stafford, whose father had been beheaded for rebelling against King Richard III, was himself executed for treason against King Henry VIII.
- 1792 – Twenty-four stock brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement to establish the New York Stock Exchange.
- 1863 – Rosalía de Castro (pictured) published Cantares gallegos, a collection of her poetry, the first book in the Galician language.
- 1954 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing racial segregation in public schools because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal".
- 1980 – On the eve of the Peruvian general election, the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path attacked a polling location in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, starting the internal conflict in Peru.
- 2009 – Dalia Grybauskaitė was elected the first female President of Lithuania, receiving 68.18 percent of the vote.