A Brief History
This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on February 17th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event.
Digging Deeper
On February 17, 1370, the Teutonic Knights fought a great battle against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a battle known as the Battle of Rudau.
On February 17, 1600, Italian polymath and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the Papal States of Rome for the crime of heresy.
On February 17, 1801, the Presidential election of the United States faced its first major test of the system put in place to elect the President when the Electoral College voted, and the result was that the contest between Thomas Jefferson/Aaron Burr, incumbent President John Adams/Charles Pinckney, and John Jay resulted in a failure of a candidate to earn an electoral majority.
On February 17, 1864, the H.L. Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, even though it had itself sunk twice before!
On February 17, 1972, misers, poor people, chicks, and Adolf Hitler were all vindicated!
On February 17, 1979, two Communist nations that had collaborated in the Vietnam War against the United States went to war with each other, as China sought to punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia.
On February 17, 1996, Chess champion Garry Kasparov bested the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer in an historic chess game between man and machine.
On Tuesday, February 17, 2015, according to Harmonix, two new songs would be made available as downloadable content (DLC) for video game Rock Band 3 on the Playstation 3.
On February 17, 2015, we listed 10 songs we think are among the sexiest of all time.
On February 17, 2019, we took a look back to this date in 2015, when we listed “10 of the Sexiest Songs of All Time.”
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Andrews, John and Matt Baker. Timeline of World History. Thunder Bay Press, 2020.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.