January 17 in History

Augustus, also known as Octavian, was the founder of the Roman Empire and the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. The reign of Augustus initiated an imperial cult and an era of imperial peace when the Roman world was largely free of armed conflict. The principate, a style of government in which the emperor showed nominal deference to the Senate, was established during his reign and lasted until the Crisis of the Third Century.

Saint Marcellus's flood or Grote Mandrenke (Middle Low German pronunciation: [ɣroːtə mandrɛŋkə]; Danish: Den Store Manddrukning, 'Great Drowning of Men') was an intense extratropical cyclone that killed at least 25,000 people and, coinciding with a new moon, swept across the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark (including Schleswig/Southern Jutland) around 16 January 1362. The storm tide is also called the "Second St. Marcellus flood" because it peaked on 16 January, the feast day of St. Marcellus. A previous "First St. Marcellus flood" had drowned 36,000 people along the coasts of West Friesland and Groningen on 16 January 1219.

Pope Gregory XI (Latin: Gregorius XI; born Pierre Roger de Beaufort; c. 1329 – 27 March 1378) was head of the Catholic Church from 30 December 1370 to his death, in March 1378. He was the seventh and last Avignon pope and the most recent French pope. In 1377, Gregory XI returned the papal court to Rome, ending nearly 70 years of papal residency in Avignon, in modern-day France. His death was swiftly followed by the Western Schism involving two Avignon-based antipopes.

Giovanni da Verrazzano was an Italian explorer from the Republic of Florence, best known for his expedition to North America. He led most of his later missions, including the one to America, in the service of King Francis I of France.

The Huguenots are a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term was in common use by around 1550 and may be derived from the name of burgomaster Besançon Hugues, who defended Geneva from Catholic Savoy. Huguenot was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard, were mainly Lutherans.

The French Wars of Religion were a series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to disapprove of Protestants and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.

Susenyos I (Ge'ez: ሱስንዮስ Sūsinyōs; c. 1571–1575 – 17 September 1632), also known as Susenyos the Catholic, was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1607 to 1632, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty. His throne names were Seltan Sagad and Malak Sagad III. He was the son of Abeto Fasil, as well as the grandson of Abeto Yakob and the great-grandson of Dawit II. As a result, while some authorities list Susenyos as a member of the Solomonic dynasty, others consider him—rather than his son, Fasilides—as the founder of the Gondar line of the dynasty (which is, however, ultimately a subset of the Solomonic dynasty). The life of Susenyos is known through his chronicle, written by several official writers (sehafe te’ezaz). The Jesuits, who were closely associated with Susenyos’s reign, also left numerous documents on their mission in Ethiopia. Manuel de Almeida, a Portuguese Jesuit who lived in Ethiopia during Susenyos reign, described the emperor as "tall with the features of a man of quality, large handsome eyes, and an ample and well groomed beard. He wore a tunic of crimson velvet down to the knee, breeches of the Moorish style, a sash or girdle of many large pieces of fine gold, and an outer coat of damask of the same colour, like a capelhar." The Spanish Jesuit, Pedro Paez described him as "tall and well-proportioned, with large eyes, a straight nose and thin lips, a joyful expression and dark complexion. He is very good-natured and has excellent qualities; he is very prudent, a great and courageous captain, cunning and experienced in matters of war, because he has spent most of his life in it, and he has made it his office to govern an army. He is very generous, affable and a man who has the word of a king, because no fault can ever be found in what he says or promises, which is something rare in Ethiopia."

The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which nominally lasted from 1640 until 1660, making it the longest-lasting Parliament in English and British history. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In September 1640, King Charles I issued writs summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640. He intended it to pass financial bills, a step made necessary by the costs of the Bishops' Wars against Scotland. The Long Parliament received its name from the fact that, by an act of Parliament, the Parliament Act 1640, it stipulated it could be dissolved only with agreement of the members; and those members did not agree to its dissolution until 16 March 1660, after the English Civil War and near the close of the Interregnum.

The Second Ormonde Peace was a peace treaty and alliance signed on 17 January 1649 between the Marquess of Ormonde, the leader of the Irish Royalists, and the Irish Confederates. It united a coalition of former Protestants and Catholics enemies from Ireland, Scotland and England – the three Kingdoms ruled by Charles I who was then held a prisoner by the Puritan Rump Parliament. His execution on 30 January drew together the signatories in allegiance to his young son Charles II. The agreement was widely accepted by Catholics across Ireland, many of whom believed their previous rising had been authorised by the old King. However it was opposed by Owen Roe O'Neill and much of his Ulster Army who instead formed a temporary alliance with the Anglo-Irish Parliamentary forces, relieving their besieged garrison at Derry. When this agreement expired O'Neill's forces then changed sides. In the wake of the vigorous Cromwellian conquest of Ireland the combined forces of the alliance were comprehensively defeated and Ireland was under republican control until the 1660 restoration. A number of the surviving soldiers loyal to Charles II later served in his Royalist Army in Exile.

Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer who led three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand, and led the first recorded visit by Europeans to the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager before enlisting in the Royal Navy in 1755. He first saw combat during the Seven Years' War, when he fought in the Siege of Louisbourg. Later in the war he surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the Siege of Quebec. In the 1760s he mapped the coastline of Newfoundland and made important astronomical observations which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a pivotal moment in British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of his three voyages. During these voyages, Cook sailed tens of thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas, mapping coastlines, islands, and features across the globe in greater detail than previously charted – including Easter Island, Alaska and South Georgia Island. He made contact with numerous indigenous peoples and claimed several territories for the Kingdom of Great Britain. Renowned for exceptional seamanship and courage in times of danger, he was patient, persistent, sober, and competent, but sometimes hot-tempered. His contributions to the prevention of scurvy, a disease common among sailors, led the Royal Society to award him the Copley Gold Medal. In 1779, during his second visit to Hawaii, Cook was killed when a dispute with Native Hawaiians turned violent. His voyages left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century. Numerous memorials have been dedicated to him worldwide.

The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence or simply the American Revolution, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and, commanded by George Washington, defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British Crown acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation. In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French Colonial Empire during the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and their Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of the Stamp and Townshend Acts. The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the Thirteen Colonies, the British Parliament had imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm British-American colonists, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, king George III declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4. In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston. British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November 1776. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton. In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility. France signed a commercial agreement with the revolutionaries, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against British-allied factions of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also Iroquois). American Indian raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans. Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the British American colonists into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American army in Yorktown, Virginia, in September and October 1781. The French navy cut off Cornwallis's escape and he was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end. The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain, and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.

Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country located in the central Mediterranean Sea. It consists of a number of islands, of which Malta and Gozo are the two main ones—south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. Valletta is the country's capital. Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country by area, ninth-most densely populated, and 166th most populated. It consists of a single urban region, because of which it is often described as a city-state. The two official languages are Maltese—recognised as the national language—and English.

The Mexican War of Independence (Spanish: Guerra de Independencia de México, 16 September 1810 – 27 September 1821) was an armed conflict and political movement that eventually resulted in Mexico's independence from the Spanish Empire. It was not a single, coherent event, but local and regional struggles that occurred within the same period, and can be considered a revolutionary civil war. It culminated with the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire in Mexico City on September 28, 1821, following the collapse of royal government and the military triumph of forces for independence. Mexican independence from Spain was not an inevitable outcome of the relationship between the Spanish Empire and its Mexican Criollos, but events in Spain had a direct impact on the outbreak of the armed insurgency in 1810 and the course of warfare through the end of the conflict. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Spain in 1808 touched off a crisis of legitimacy of Spanish crown rule, since Napoleon had forcefully placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne after the abdication of the Spanish king Charles IV. In Spain and many of its overseas possessions, the local response was to set up juntas, ruling in the name of the Bourbon monarchy. Delegates in Spain and overseas territories met in Cádiz—as the Cortes of Cádiz, and drafted the Spanish Constitution of 1812. That constitution sought to create a new governing framework in the absence of the legitimate Spanish monarch. It tried to accommodate the aspirations of American-born Spaniards (criollos) for more local control and equal standing among side with Peninsular-born Spaniards (Peninsulares). This political process had far-reaching impacts throughout the New Spain colony during the independence war and beyond. Pre-existing cultural, religious, and racial divides in Mexico played a major role in not only the development of the independence movement but also the development of the conflict as it progressed. The conflict had several phases. The first uprising for independence was originally led by Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who issued the Cry of Dolores on 16 September 1810. The revolt was massive and not well organized. Hidalgo was captured by Mexican royalist forces, defrocked from the priesthood, and executed in July 1811. The second phase of the Mexican patriot insurgency was led by Father José María Morelos, who was captured by Mexican royalist forces and executed as well, in December 1815. The insurgency had then devolved into a guerrilla warfare, with Vicente Guerrero emerging as its leader. Neither royalists nor patriot insurgents gained the upper hand, with military stalemate continuing until 1821, when former royalist commander Agustín de Iturbide made an alliance with Guerrero under the Plan of Iguala in 1821. They formed a unified military force rapidly bringing about the collapse of royal government and the establishment of independent Mexico. The unexpected turn of events in Mexico was prompted by events in Spain. When Spanish liberals overthrew the autocratic rule of king Ferdinand VII in 1820, Mexican conservatives in New Spain saw political independence as a way to maintain their position. The unified military force entered Mexico City in triumph in September 1821 and the Spanish viceroy Juan O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba, ending Spanish colonial rule. American Indian resistance in Mexico predates the War of Independence, including the 1761 Peasant Revolt in Puebla in response to Spanish colonial policies. Though suppressed, these movements had sustained opposition traditions. Besides, Afro-Mexicans like Vicente Guerrero and José María Morelos also played crucial roles in Mexico's independence movement in the early 19th century. Following independence, the mainland of New Spain was officially organized into the First Mexican Empire, led by Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. This ephemeral constitutional monarchy was overthrown and a federal republic was declared in 1823 and codified in the Constitution of 1824. After some Spanish reconquest attempts, including the expedition of Isidro Barradas in 1829, Spain eventually came under the rule of queen Isabella II, who had recognized the independence of Mexico in 1836.

The Sand River Convention (Afrikaans: Sandrivierkonvensie) of 17 January 1852 was a convention whereby the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland formally recognised the independence of the Boers north of the Vaal River.

The Modoc are an Indigenous American people who historically lived in the area which is now northeastern California and central Southern Oregon. Currently, they include two federally recognized tribes, the Klamath Tribes in Oregon and the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, now known as the Modoc Nation.

A dervish, darvesh, darwēsh, or darwīsh is a Muslim who seeks salvation through ascetic practices and meditations. It can refer to an individual or to a member of a Sufi order (tariqah). Their focus is on the universal values of love and service, deserting the illusions of ego (nafs) to reach God. This is usually done by performing a lifestyle which decreases bodily function to a minimum in order to attain what would be called "esoteric knowledge" in Western terminology. In most Sufi orders, a dervish is known to practice dhikr through physical exertions or religious practices to attain the ecstatic trance to reach God. Their most popular practice is Sama, which is associated with the 13th-century mystic Rumi.

Lorrin Andrews Thurston (July 31, 1858 – May 11, 1931) was a Hawaiian citizen lawyer, politician, and businessman. Thurston played a prominent role in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii to replace Queen Liliʻuokalani with the Republic of Hawaii, with discreet US support for which Congress much later apologized. He published the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (a forerunner of the present-day Honolulu Star-Advertiser), and owned other enterprises. From 1906 to 1916, he and his network lobbied with national politicians to create a national park to preserve the Hawaiian volcanoes.

Wake Island (Marshallese: Ānen Kio, lit. 'island of the kio flower'), also known as Wake Atoll (Chamorro: Islan Wake), is a coral atoll which is an unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the Pacific Ocean. The atoll is composed of three islets – Wake, Wilkes, and Peale Islands – surrounding a lagoon encircled by a coral reef. The nearest inhabited island is Utirik Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located 592 miles (953 kilometers) to the southeast. The island may have been found by prehistoric Austronesian mariners before its first recorded discovery by Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1568. Ships continued visiting the area in the following centuries, but the island remained undeveloped until the United States claimed it in 1899. Significant development of the island did not begin until 1935 when Pan American Airways constructed an airfield and hotel, establishing Wake Island as a stopover for trans-Pacific flying boat routes. In December 1941 at the opening of the Pacific Theatre of World War II Japan seized the island, which remained under Japanese occupation until the end of the war in September 1945. In 1972, Pan American Airways ceased using the island for trans-Pacific layovers, instead using Boeing 747 aircraft, which could cross the ocean without stopping. With the withdrawal of Pan American Airways, the island's administration was taken over by the United States Air Force, which later used the atoll as a processing location for Vietnamese refugees during Operation New Life in 1975. Wake Island is claimed by the Marshall Islands but is administered by the United States as an unorganized and unincorporated territory and is part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The island is administered by the Department of the Interior and managed by the United States Air Force. While there are no permanent residents, approximately 300 people are on the island at any given time, primarily military personnel and contractors. The natural areas of Wake are a mix of tropical trees, scrub, and grasses that have adapted to the limited rainfall. Thousands of hermit crabs and rats live on Wake, and in the past, cats were introduced to help control the rat population, which at one time was estimated at 2 million. The Wake Island rail, a small flightless bird, once lived on the atoll but went extinct during World War II. Many seabird species also visit Wake, although the thick vegetation has caused most birds to nest in a designated bird sanctuary on Wilkes Island. The submerged and emergent lands at Wake Island are a unit of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

El Yunque National Forest (Spanish: Bosque Nacional El Yunque), most commonly known as El Yunque, is a tropical rainforest with cultural, historical, ecological, scientific, and recreational features in the Sierra de Luquillo mountain subrange in the northeast of the main island of Puerto Rico, managed by the U.S. Forest Service since 1903. Situated immediately outside the urban core of the San Juan metro area, within 40 km (25 mi) east of the Old San Juan historic quarter, Condado and Isla Verde resort areas, Hato Rey business center, and SJU airport, the forest is mostly concentrated in the municipalities of Río Grande, Luquillo, and Naguabo. In addition to being the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System, it is the easternmost, southernmost, wettest, and most biodiverse national forest in the U.S. Covering 28,516 acres (44.556 mi2) of the Sierra de Luquillo mountain subrange, El Yunque is geologically composed primarily of volcaniclastic rocks, mostly basalt and andesite fragments, with significant igneous intrusions of quartz diorite on its the south-central part, all formed underwater during the Early to Late Cretaceous epochs. It has 8 peaks reaching more than 900 m (2,953 ft), of which 5 exceed more than 1,000 m (3,280 ft), including the El Toro, El Yunque, and Los Picachos peaks. It is the source of 10 rivers and 7 watersheds fed by 3,860 mm (152 in) of yearly average rainfall, mostly drained by the Blanco, Espíritu Santo, Loíza, and Mameyes rivers. It has six distinct forest types, namely the gallery forests along waterways, the secondary and tabonuco lowland forests, the palo colorado and palma de sierra mid-elevation forests, and the roblecillo and guayabota cloud forests. These are habitat to 164 vertebrate species and more than 1,000 tree and plant species. With about 1.2 million visitors annually, El Yunque is equipped with the El Portal de El Yunque visitor and exhibition center, and the Caimitillo, Palma de Sierra, Puente Roto, Quebrada Grande, and Río Sabana picnic and recreational areas. It has 13 hiking trails of varying difficulty covering about 31 km (19 mi), including the La Coca, Big Tree, La Mina, El Yunque, Mt. Britton, and Trade Winds trails. These not only lead to open-access ponds, streams, and/or waterfalls, some of which feature boulders with pre-Columbian petroglyphs made by the Taíno, who revered the forest as a spiritual site, but they also end at observation towers and platforms on summits, which, depending on cloud cover, offer panoramic views of not only the forest and the mountain subrange, but also of nearby municipalities from Bayamón and San Juan in the west to Vieques and Culebra in the east. The highest visitor parking areas in the forest are near Mt. Britton trail at an elevation of about 760 m (2,493 ft). El Yunque is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, an area protected to demonstrate the values of conservation, operating as an experimental forest under the Luquillo Experimental Forest, which provides scientific research on climate, geology, soils, water resources, flora, fauna, and ecology. Among its investigation stations is the Iguaca Aviary, dedicated to the preservation of the Puerto Rican parrot, a critically endangered species. Additionally, specific areas within the forest are further protected for their scientific, ecological, recreational, and/or scenic value, including the El Toro Wilderness, Baño de Oro Research Natural Area, and Icacos Wild and Scenic River.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов; 29 January [O.S. 17 January] 1860 – 15 July [O.S. 2 July] 1904) was a Russian playwright, short story writer, and physician. Widely considered one of the greatest writers of all time, his career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." Chekhov began writing stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He wrote that it is not the duty of writers to solve problems, but to correctly state them.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British naval officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904 and the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–1913. On the first expedition, Scott set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S and discovered the Antarctic Plateau, on which the South Pole is located. On the second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, less than five weeks after Amundsen's South Pole expedition. On the return journey from the Pole, a planned meeting with supporting dog teams from the base camp failed, despite Scott's written instructions, and at a distance of 162 miles (261 km) from their base camp at Hut Point and approximately 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from the next depot, Scott and his companions died. When Scott and his party's bodies were discovered, they had in their possession the first Antarctic fossils discovered. The fossils were determined to be from the Glossopteris tree and proved that Antarctica was once forested and joined to other continents. Before his appointment to lead the Discovery Expedition, Scott had a career as a Royal Navy officer. In 1899, he had a chance encounter with Sir Clements Markham, the president of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), and learned of a planned Antarctic expedition, which he soon volunteered to lead. His name became inseparably associated with the Antarctic, the field of work to which he remained committed during the final years of his life. Following the news of his death, Scott became a celebrated hero, a status reflected by memorials erected across the UK. However, in the last decades of the 20th century, questions were raised about his competence and character. Commentators in the 21st century have regarded Scott more positively after assessing the temperature drop below −40 °C (−40 °F) in March 1912, and after re-discovering Scott's written orders of October 1911, in which he had instructed the dog teams to meet and assist him on the return trip.

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. With a population of over 140 million, Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with three-fourths of its population living in urban areas. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and a major cultural centre.

The United States Virgin Islands, officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, is a Caribbean unincorporated territory of the United States. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. The islands have a tropical climate.

The Finnish Civil War was fought in 1918 for the leadership and control of recently independent Finland (formerly part of Russia) between White Finland and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Red Finland). The clashes took place in the context of the national, political, and social turmoil caused by World War I (Eastern Front) in Europe. The belligerents were the paramilitary Red Guards, led by a section of the Social Democratic Party with backup of the Russian bolsheviks, and the paramilitary White Guards of the senate. General C. G. E. Mannerheim led the White Guards with major assistance by both the Finnish Jäger Battalion trained in Germany and from March-April 1918 by the German Imperial Army, along the German goal to control Fennoscandia and Petrograd of Russia. The Reds, composed of industrial and agrarian working class people, controlled the cities and industrial centres of southern Finland. The Whites, composed of land owners and the middle and upper class, controlled the rural central and northern Finland. In the years before the civil war, Finland had experienced rapid population growth, industrialisation, gradually increasing urbanisation and the rise of a comprehensive labour movement. The country's political and governmental systems were in an unstable phase of democratisation and modernisation. The socio-economic condition and education of the population had gradually improved, and national awareness and culture had progressed. World War I led to the collapse of the Russian Empire, causing a power vacuum in Finland, and the subsequent struggle for dominance led to militarisation and an escalating crisis between the left-leaning labour movement and the conservatives. The Reds carried out an unsuccessful general offensive in February 1918, supplied with weapons by Soviet Russia. A counteroffensive by the Whites began in March, reinforced by the German Empire's military detachments in April. The decisive engagements were the Battles of Tampere and Viipuri, won by the Whites, and the Battles of Helsinki and Lahti, won by German troops, leading to overall victory for the Whites and the German forces. Political violence became a part of this warfare with around 12,000 casualties - most of them were Reds. Moreover, about 12,500 Red prisoners died of malnutrition and disease in camps. In total around 38,000 people died in the conflict, where around one million Finns of the total population of three million had been more or less involved with. In the immediate aftermath, Finland passed from the sphere of influence of Soviet Russia to the German power sphere with a plan to establish a German-led Finnish monarchy. The scheme ended with Germany's defeat in World War I, and Finland instead emerged as a sovereign, democratic, constitutional state with proper civil society. The civil war divided the nation for decades. The Finnish society was gradually reunited through social compromises based on a long-term culture of moderate politics, religion and a post-war economic recovery.

The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. A wide coalition composed of mostly Protestants, prohibitionists first attempted to end the trade in alcoholic drinks during the 19th century. They aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and saloon-based political corruption. Many communities introduced alcohol bans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and enforcement of these new prohibition laws became a topic of debate. Prohibition supporters, called "drys", presented it as a battle for public morals and health. The movement was taken up by progressives in the Prohibition, Democratic, and Republican parties, and gained a national grassroots base through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. After 1900, it was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Opposition from the beer industry mobilized "wet" supporters from the wealthy Catholic and German Lutheran communities, but the influence of these groups receded from 1917 following the entry of the U.S. into the First World War against Germany. The Eighteenth Amendment passed in 1919 "with a 68 percent supermajority in the House of Representatives and 76 percent support in the Senate" and was ratified by 46 out of 48 states. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the federal ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Not all alcohol was banned; for example, religious use of wine was permitted. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol were not made illegal under federal law, but local laws were stricter in many areas, and some states banned possession outright. By the late 1920s, a new opposition to Prohibition emerged nationwide. At a critical time in the country's economic history, before and at the beginning of the Great Depression, it was claimed that the policy had lowered tax revenues. Religiously, "rural" Protestant values were being imposed on "urban" America. The Twenty-first Amendment ended Prohibition, though it continued in some states. To date, this is the only time in American history in which a constitutional amendment was passed for the purpose of repealing another. The overall effects of Prohibition on society are disputed and hard to pin down. Some research indicates that alcohol consumption declined substantially due to Prohibition, while other research indicates that Prohibition did not reduce alcohol consumption in the long term. Americans who wanted to continue drinking alcohol found loopholes in Prohibition laws or used illegal methods to obtain alcohol, resulting in the emergence of black markets and crime syndicates dedicated to distributing alcohol. By contrast, rates of liver cirrhosis, alcoholic psychosis, and infant mortality declined during Prohibition. Because of the lack of uniform national statistics gathered about crime prior to 1930, it is difficult to draw conclusions about Prohibition's effect on crime at the national level. Support for Prohibition diminished steadily throughout its duration, including among former supporters of Prohibition.

The Franco-Thai War (October 1940 – 28 January 1941, Thai: กรณีพิพาทอินโดจีน, romanized: Karani Phiphat Indochin; French: Guerre franco-thaïlandaise) was fought between Thailand and Vichy France over certain areas of French Indochina. Negotiations shortly before World War II had shown that the French government was willing to alter the boundaries between Thailand and French Indochina, but only slightly. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Major-General Plaek Phibunsongkhram (popularly known as "Phibun"), the prime minister of Thailand, decided that France's defeat strengthened the Thais' negotiating position to regain the vassal state territories that were ceded to France during King Chulalongkorn's reign. The German and Italian military occupation of Metropolitan France rendered France's hold on French Indochina and its other overseas territories tenuous. The colonial administration was cut off from outside help and supplies. After the invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, Japan forced the French to allow them to set up military bases. The seemingly subservient behavior of the French lulled the Phibun regime into believing that France would not seriously resist a military confrontation by Thailand.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Allies, or Allied powers, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during World War II (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers. Its principal members were the "Big Four"—the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China.

The Vistula–Oder offensive (Russian: Висло-Одерская операция, romanized: Vislo–Oderskaya operatsiya) was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European theatre of World War II in January 1945. The army made a major advance into German-held territory, capturing Kraków, Warsaw, and Poznań. The Red Army had built up their strength around a number of key bridgeheads, with two fronts commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Against them, the German Army Group A, led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe (soon replaced by Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner), was outnumbered five to one. Within days, German commandants evacuated the concentration camps, sending the prisoners on their death marches to the west, where ethnic Germans also started fleeing. In a little over two weeks, the Red Army had advanced 480 kilometres (300 mi) from the Vistula to the Oder, only 69 kilometres (43 mi) from Berlin, which was undefended. However, Zhukov called a halt, owing to continued German resistance on his northern flank (Pomerania), and the advance on Berlin had to be delayed until April.

SS-Totenkopfverbände was a major branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the concentration camps and extermination camps of Nazi Germany, among similar duties. It was both the successor and expanded organisation to the SS-Wachverbände formed in 1933. While the Totenkopf was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore this insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other SS formations.

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings which he declared as Swedish territory.

The United Nations Security Council is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, and is the United Nations' executive branch, having primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the UN Charter, include establishing peacekeeping operations, authorizing military action, and imposing international sanctions. Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the council may identify threats to international peace, determine breaches of that peace, and authorize responses up to and including the use of force. It is the only UN body with the authority to adopt binding international law by issuing resolutions binding on all member states. The council also recommends the admission of new member states to the UN General Assembly, and approves changes to the Charter. It is led by the president of the Security Council, who chairs its meetings and rotates between the current members on a monthly basis and the United Nations secretary-general who acts as its executive officer overseeing the implementation of its decisions and mandates. The United Nations secretary-general is empowered by the UN Charter to "bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security".

The Renville Agreement was a United Nations Security Council-brokered political accord between the Netherlands, which was seeking to re-establish its colony in Southeast Asia, and Indonesian Republicans seeking Indonesian independence during the Indonesian National Revolution. Ratified on 17 January 1948, the agreement was an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the disputes that arose following the 1946 Linggadjati Agreement. It recognised a cease-fire along the Status Quo Line or so-called "Van Mook Line", an artificial line that connected the most advanced Dutch positions.

The Great Brink's Robbery was an armed robbery of the Brink's building in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1950. The $2.775 million theft consisted of $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders, and other securities. It was at the time the largest robbery in the history of the United States and has been called "the crime of the century," and "the perfect crime ". The robbery remained unsolved for nearly six years, until estranged group member Joseph O'Keefe testified only days before the statute of limitations would have expired.

Dwight David Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. A member of the Republican Party, he was renowned as a World War II general who commanded Allied forces in Operation Torch and Operation Overlord. He attained the five-star rank of General of the Army in 1944.

The Republic of the Congo or First Congolese Republic, formerly the Belgian Congo and now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was a state in Central Africa that gained independence in 1960 and continued until a 1965 coup d'état by General Joseph Mobutu.

The Palomares accident occurred on 17 January 1966, when a United States Air Force B-52G bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refueling at 31,000 feet (9,450 m) over the Mediterranean Sea, near the Spanish village of Palomares in Almería province. The collision destroyed the tanker, killing all four crew members, and caused the bomber to break apart, resulting in the deaths of three of its seven crew members. The B-52G was participating in Operation Chrome Dome, a Cold War airborne alert mission involving continuous flights of nuclear-armed bombers.

The Black Panther Party (BPP), formerly the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was an American Marxist–Leninist and black power political and militant organization from 1966 to 1982, founded and led by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Between 1968 and 1971, it was a nationwide organization with chapters in many major cities, and members were active in many prisons and the party had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. The party first drew attention for openly carrying firearms in Oakland, California while monitoring police activity; resultantly, members were involved in multiple fatal firefights with police. Its earliest goal was to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department that affected the African American community during the civil rights movement. It advocated for decent housing, community control of education and police, exemption from military service for black men during the Vietnam War, and free breakfast for children. The party's dissolution led to various splinter groups and successor organizations.

In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty in 27 states, throughout the country at the federal level, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in the other 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is constitutionally permitted only for murder, with permissibility for use for crimes against the state not having been legally decided. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 21 of them have authority to execute death sentences, with the other 6 subject to moratoriums.

President of the Philippines is the title of the head of state, head of government and chief executive of the Philippines. The president leads the executive branch of the Philippine government and is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The Stockton schoolyard shooting occurred at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California, on January 17, 1989. The perpetrator, 24-year-old Patrick Purdy, shot and killed five children and wounded thirty-one others—all but one of them children—before committing suicide approximately three minutes after first opening fire.

The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States in response to Saddam Hussein invading neighboring Kuwait on 2 August 1990. The coalition's efforts were in two phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, from the bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January until the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February.

Harald V was King of Norway from 1991 until his death in 2026.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake affected Greater Los Angeles, California, United States, on January 17, 1994, at 04:30:55 PST. The epicenter of the moment magnitude 6.7 blind thrust earthquake was beneath the San Fernando Valley. The shock lasted approximately 8 seconds and achieved a peak ground acceleration of over 1.7 g. It is the largest recorded earthquake in the area's history, slightly surpassing the Mw 6.6 1971 San Fernando earthquake. Shaking was felt as far away as San Diego, California; Turlock, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Richfield, Utah; Phoenix, Arizona; and Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Sixty people died and more than 9,000 were injured. In addition, property damage was estimated to be $13–50 billion, making it among the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

The Kobe earthquake, also known as the Great Hanshin Earthquake , occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region of Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum intensity of 7 on the JMA Seismic Intensity Scale. The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The hypocenter of the earthquake was located 17 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the center of the city of Kobe.

The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Czech Republic has a hilly landscape that covers an area of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi) with a mostly temperate continental and oceanic climate. The capital and largest city is Prague; other major cities and urban areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and Liberec.

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida.

A sex scandal involving Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, erupted in 1998. Their sexual relationship began in 1995—when Clinton was 49 years old and Lewinsky was 22 years old—and lasted 18 months, ending in 1997. Clinton ended televised remarks on January 26, 1998, with the later infamous statement: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Further investigation led to charges of perjury and to the impeachment of Clinton in December 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 1999, he was subsequently acquitted on both impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day U.S. Senate trial.

Mount Nyiragongo is an active stratovolcano with an elevation of 3,470 m (11,385 ft) in the Virunga Mountains associated with the Albertine Rift. It is located inside Virunga National Park, in the North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 12 km (7.5 mi) north of the town of Goma and Lake Kivu and just 9.8 km (6.1mi) west of the border with Rwanda. The main crater is about two kilometres (1 mi) wide and usually contains a lava lake. The crater presently has two distinct cooled lava benches within the crater walls – one at about 3,175 m (10,417 ft) and a lower one at about 2,975 m (9,760 ft).

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the estimated likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe, in the opinion of the nonprofit organization Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

British Airways Flight 38 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China, to Heathrow Airport in London, United Kingdom, an 8,100-kilometre trip. On 17 January 2008, the Boeing 777 aircraft crash-landed short of runway 27L at Heathrow. Of the 152 people on board, 47 were injured, 1 of them seriously. The aircraft sustained heavy damage and was written off as a result, becoming the first hull loss of a Boeing 777.

Clashes took place in 2010 between Muslim and Christian ethnic groups in central Nigeria in and near the city of Jos. The first spate of violence of 2010 started on 17 January in Jos and spread to surrounding communities. Houses, churches, mosques and vehicles were set ablaze, during at least four days of fighting. At least 326 people, and possibly more than a thousand, were killed.

Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He achieved international fame for winning the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, but was stripped of his titles in 2012 after an investigation into doping allegations found that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs over his career. Armstrong has been banned for life from all sanctioned bicycling events since 2012, though he retired from professional cycling in 2011.

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American retired politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American to serve as president. Obama represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 2005 to 2008 and served as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on 8 March 2014 led to a multinational search effort in Southeast Asia and the southern Indian Ocean that became the most expensive search in aviation history.

On 17 January 2026, an ATR 42 operated by Indonesia Air Transport crashed while flying from Adisutjipto Airport to Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport in Indonesia. Air traffic control reportedly lost contact with the flight in the South Sulawesi area, and the aircraft was ultimately found to have crashed in the Bulusaraung mountain area. All ten people on board were killed. Burning wreckage was found in a remote area.