May 17

1395 Battle of Rovine: The Wallachians defeat an invading Ottoman army.

1521 Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, is executed for treason.

1527 Pánfilo de Narváez departs Spain to explore Florida with 600 men – by 1536 only four survive.

1536 George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount Rochford and four other men are executed for treason.

1590 Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.

1642 Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.

1648 Emperor Ferdinand III defeats Maximilian I of Bavaria in the Battle of Zusmarshausen.

1673 Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.

1756 Seven Years' War formally begins when Great Britain declares war on France

1760 French forces besieging Quebec retreat after the Royal Navy arrives to relieve the British garrison.

1792 The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement.

1805 Muhammad Ali becomes Wāli of Egypt.

1809 Emperor Napoleon I orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire.

1814 Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian.

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1859 Members of the Melbourne Football Club codified the first rules of Australian rules football.

1863 Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, the first book in the Galician language.

1865 The International Telegraph Union (later the International Telecommunication Union) is established in Paris.

1875 Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby with the jockey Oliver Lewis (2:37.75).

1902 Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer.

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1914 The Protocol of Corfu is signed, recognising full autonomy to Northern Epirus under nominal Albanian sovereignty.

1915 The last British Liberal Party government (led by H. H. Asquith) falls.

1933 Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort form Nasjonal Samling — the national-socialist party of Norway.

1937 Spanish Civil War: The Largo Caballero government resigns in the wake of the Barcelona May Days, leading Juan Negrín to form a government, without the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, in its stead.

1939 The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the United States' first televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City.

1940 World War II: Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium.

1943 World War II: Dambuster Raids commence by No. 617 Squadron RAF.

1953 Delta Air Lines Flight 318 crashes near Marshall, Texas, killing 19.

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1954 The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

1967 Six-Day War: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt.

1969 Venera program: Soviet Venera 6 begins its descent into the atmosphere of Venus, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.

1973 Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.

1974 The Troubles: Thirty-three civilians are killed and 300 injured when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) detonates four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Republic of Ireland.

1977 Nolan Bushnell opened the first Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre (later renamed Chuck E. Cheese) in San Jose, California.

1980 General Chun Doo-hwan of South Korea seizes control of the government and declares martial law in order to suppress student demonstrations.

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.

1984 Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture.

1987 Iran–Iraq War: An Iraqi Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet fires two missiles into the U.S. Navy warship USS Stark, killing 37 and injuring 21 of her crew.

1990 The General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminates homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.

1992 Three days of popular protests against the government of Prime Minister of Thailand Suchinda Kraprayoon begin in Bangkok, leading to a military crackdown that results in 52 officially confirmed deaths, hundreds of injuries, many disappearances, and more than 3,500 arrests.

1994 Malawi holds its first multi-party elections.

1995 Shawn Nelson steals an M60 tank from the California Army National Guard Armory in San Diego and proceeds to go on a rampage.

1997 Troops of Laurent-Désiré Kabila march into Kinshasa. Zaire is officially renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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2000 Arsenal and Galatasaray fans clash in the 2000 UEFA Cup Final riots in Copenhagen

2004 The first legal same-sex marriages in the U.S. are performed in the state of Massachusetts.

2006 The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef.

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.

2010 Pamir Airways Flight 112 crashes in Afghanistan's Shakardara District, killing 44.

2014 A military plane crash in northern Laos kills 17 people.

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