Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 17

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This is a list of selected August 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.

← August 16	August 18 →

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Images

Use only ONE image at a time

Hurricane Camille
Robert Fulton
Soldiers lay flowers at the memorial for the Hill 303 massacre
Damage from the 1999 earthquake at İzmit, Turkey
Sukarno proclaiming Indonesian independence
width=133
Michael Phelps
Battle of Verneuil

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
Independence Day in Gabon (1960)	refimprove section
1807 – Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat, the world's first commercially successful paddle steamer, went into service on the Hudson River in New York.	refimprove
1862 – A council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley in an effort to drive whites out of the area, sparking the Dakota War.	refimprove section
1866 - The Grand Duchy of Baden announced its withdrawal from the German Confederation and signed a treaty of peace and alliance with Prussia.	refimprove
1914 – World War I: Ignoring orders to retreat, Hermann von François led a successful counterattack defending East Prussia at the Battle of Stallupönen and scored the first German victory in the Eastern Front.	unreferenced section
1943 – Second World War: The Royal Air Force began a strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany's V-weapon programme by attacking the Peenemünde Army Research Center.	lots of CN tags
1947 – A commission led by Cyril Radcliffe established the Radcliffe Line, the border between India and Pakistan after the Partition of India.	cleanup required
1962 – East German border guards shot and killed Peter Fechter as he attempted to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin.	refimprove
1980 – Two-month-old Australian Azaria Chamberlain was taken from her family's campsite at Uluru by a dingo, for which her mother was wrongly convicted of murder.	lots of CN tags
1991 – A spree killer went on a shooting rampage at a shopping mall in Strathfield, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, killing seven people before being committing suicide.	lots of CN tags
1998 – U.S. President Bill Clinton admitted in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.	appears on January 26
Nitta Yoshisada (d. 1338)	date not cited

Eligible

1424 – Hundred Years' War: The allied English–Burgundian force gained a strategically important victory in the bloody Battle of Verneuil in Normandy, France.
confession of faith to initiate the Scottish Reformation and disestablish Catholicism as the national religion
.

1676 – The Battle of Halmstad was fought at Fyllebro and was the last battle in Halland between Denmark and Sweden.
Seattle, Washington
, U.S., opened for business.
1915 – American Jew Leo Frank was lynched by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia, for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl.
1915 – The Category 4 1915 Galveston hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, and caused a great deal of destruction in its path, leaving 275-400 people dead and $50 million in damage.
1916 – World War I: Romania signed a secret treaty with the Entente Powers to enter the war in return for territorial considerations.
1943 – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in a highly secret military conference held in Quebec City.
Dutch Empire
.
1945 – Animal Farm, George Orwell's satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, was first published.
1950 – Korean War: A North Korean Army unit massacred 42 American prisoners of war so that they would not slow the North Koreans down.
M_L earthquake occurred in southwestern Montana, U.S., causing a huge landslide that caused over 28 fatalities and created Quake Lake
.

1977 – The Soviet icebreaker NS Arktika became the first surface ship to reach the North Pole.
2008 – Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympics, setting the record for the most golds won by an individual in a single games.
Born/died: Paige
(b. 1992)

Notes

Eustathios Daphnomeles appears on August 15, so Battle of the Gates of Trajan should not appear in the same year
Hurricane Charley appears on August 13 and Hurricane Andrew is on August 24, so Hurricane Camille should not appear in the same year
Atlantic Charter appears on August 14, so Quebec Conference should not appear in the same year

August 17: Independence Day in Indonesia (1945)

Miles Davis

986 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: The Bulgarians defeated Byzantine forces at the Gate of Trajan near present-day Ihtiman, with Emperor Basil II barely escaping.
1959 – Kind of Blue by Miles Davis (pictured), one of the best selling and most critically acclaimed jazz recordings of all time, was released.
1969 – Hurricane Camille struck the Mississippi coast of the United States, killing 259 people and causing $1.42 billion in damages.
1999 – A 7.6 M_w earthquake struck northwestern Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people and leaving more than 250,000 homeless.
broke apart violently
, flooding the power station, causing widespread power failures and killing 75 people.

Li Shouzhen (d. 949) · Matthew Boulton (d. 1809) · Dawn Mabalon (b. 1972)

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