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

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1673 - Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.
2. 1792 - The New York Stock Exchange is formed.
3. 1865 - The International Telegraph Union (later the International Telecommunication Union) is established in Paris.
4. 1902 - Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer.
5. 1943 - The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC.
6. 1954 - The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
7. 1983 - The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (ultimately found to be 4.2 million pounds), in response to the Appalachian Observer's Freedom of Information Act request.
8. 2004 - Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
9. 2006 - The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef.
10. 2007 - Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments. This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized Zone since 1953.
11. Famous Birthdays: Edward Jenner (English physician and microbiologist), Virginie Loveling (Belgian author and poet), Odd Hassel (Norwegian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate), Julius Sumner Miller (American physicist), Ronald Wayne (American computer scientist and author, co-founded Apple Inc.)

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

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 16

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 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.