January 17: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1377 - Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon.
2. 1524 - Giovanni da Verrazzano sets sail westward from Madeira to find a sea route to the Pacific Ocean.
3. 1903 - El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico becomes part of the United States National Forest System as the Luquillo Forest Reserve.
4. 1917 - The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
5. 1929 - Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
6. 1945 - The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in.
7. 1946 - The UN Security Council holds its first session.
8. 1961 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex".
9. 1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scudmissiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
10. 2007 - The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Koreanuclear testing.
11. Famous Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin (American politician, scientist, and publisher, 6th President of Pennsylvania, signer of the United States Declaration of Independence), John Stanley (English organist and composer), Anne Brontë (English author and poet), Eugene Augustin Lauste (French-American inventor), George Joseph Stigler (American economist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: January 16

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: January 18

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.