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.
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Blurb | Reason |
---|---|
Independence Day in Gabon ( 1960) | refimprove section |
: Independence Day in Indonesia ( 1945) | Independence Day: refimprove, Indonesia: date not cited |
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. | page numbers needed |
1884 – The German colony of Kamerun was established, in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon and surrounding areas. | 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. | single source |
1947 – A commission led by Cyril Radcliffe established the Radcliffe Line, the border between India and Pakistan after the Partition of India. | cleanup required |
1959 – A magnitude 7.3 ML earthquake occurred in southwestern Montana, U.S., causing a huge landslide that caused over 28 fatalities and created Quake Lake. | page numbers needed |
1962 – East German border guards shot and killed Peter Fechter as he attempted to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin. | refimprove |
1977 – The Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika became the first surface ship to reach the North Pole. | 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 in one section |
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 in one section |
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 |
1999 – An earthquake registering 7.6 Mw northwestern Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people and leaving more than 250,000 homeless. | needs maintenance |
Nitta Yoshisada |d|1338 | date not cited |
Davy Crockett |b|1786 | in popular culture |