October 17 in History

Emperor Zetian (17 February 624 – 16 December 705), personal name Wu Zhao, was the only undisputed female sovereign in the history of China. She had previously held power as the empress consort of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang dynasty from 660 to 683 and as empress dowager during the reigns of her sons, Emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong, between 683 and 690. She was the sole ruler of the self-styled Zhou dynasty from 690 to 705. In her early life, Wu served as a concubine of Emperor Taizong. After his death, she married his successor, Emperor Gaozong, becoming empress in 655. Wu exercised substantial political influence even before her elevation and gradually came to dominate court affairs. After Gaozong suffered a debilitating stroke in 660, she effectively administered the empire on his behalf until his death in 683. Breaking with precedent, Wu then consolidated power and prevented her sons from ruling. In 690, she proclaimed the Zhou dynasty in place of the Tang and crowned herself emperor. During her 45-year de facto rule over China, Wu institutionalized the use of informants and enforced stringent legal measures, purged members of the Tang royal house and veteran officials from earlier administrations, reformed the civil service system to promote merit, patronized Buddhism as well as literature and the arts, and conducted military campaigns against Turkic and Tibetan incursions. Her rule formed part of the High Tang period, a historic peak in China's political power and cultural influence. In her later years, her governance became increasingly autocratic and extravagant. She was removed from power in the Shenlong Coup, which abolished the Zhou dynasty and restored the Tang, and she died a few months later.

David II (5 March 1324 – 22 February 1371) was King of Scotland from 1329 until his death in 1371. Upon the death of his father, Robert the Bruce, David succeeded to the throne at the age of five and was crowned at Scone in November 1331, becoming the first Scottish monarch to be anointed at his coronation. During his childhood, David was governed by a series of guardians, and Edward III of England sought to take advantage of David's minority by supporting an invasion of Scotland by Edward Balliol, beginning the Second War of Scottish Independence. Following the English victory at the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, King David, Queen Joan and the rump of his government were evacuated to France, where he remained in exile until it was safe for him to return to Scotland in 1341. In 1346, David invaded England in support of France during the Hundred Years' War. His army was defeated at the Battle of Neville's Cross and he was captured and held as a prisoner in England for eleven years, while his nephew Robert Stewart governed Scotland. In 1357 the Treaty of Berwick brought the Second War of Independence to an end, the Scots agreed to pay a ransom of 100,000 merks, and David was allowed to return home. Heavy taxation was needed to pay for the ransom, which was to be paid in instalments, and David alienated his subjects by using the money for his own purposes. By 1363 it was found impossible to raise the remaining ransom, and David sought its cancellation by offering to bequeath the succession to the Scottish throne to Edward III or one of his sons. In 1364, the parliament of Scotland rejected David's proposal to make Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, the next king. Despising his nephew, David sought to prevent him from succeeding to his throne by marrying his mistress Margaret Drummond and producing an alternative heir. When his second wife failed to do so, David unsuccessfully attempted to divorce her. Although David spent long periods in exile or captivity, he managed to ensure the survival of his kingdom, reformed the machinery of government, and left the Scottish monarchy in a strong position. The last male of the House of Bruce, he died childless in 1371 after a reign of 41 years and was succeeded by his nephew Robert II.

The Second Battle of Kosovo (Hungarian: második rigómezei csata, Turkish: İkinci Kosova Muharebesi) was a land battle between a Hungarian-led Crusader army and the Ottoman Empire at Kosovo field (the Field of Blackbirds) that took place from 17–20 October 1448. It was the culmination of a Hungarian offensive to avenge the defeat at the Battle of Varna four years earlier. In the three-day battle the Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Murad II defeated the Crusader army of regent John Hunyadi. After the battle, the path was clear for the Turks to conquer Serbia and the other Balkan States; it also ended any hopes of saving Constantinople. The Hungarian kingdom no longer had the military and financial resources to mount an offensive against the Ottomans. With the end of the half-century-long Crusader threat to their European frontier, Murad's son Mehmed II was free to lay siege to Constantinople in 1453.

The University of Greifswald (German: [ˈɡʁaɪfsvalt]; German: Universität Greifswald), formerly known as Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, is a public research university located in Greifswald, Germany, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Founded in 1456, it is the fourth oldest university in Germany and one of the oldest universities in Europe, with generations of notable alumni and staff having studied or worked in Greifswald. Approximately two-thirds of the 10,179 students are from outside Mecklenburg–Vorpommern, including international students from 90 countries.

The Affair of the Placards (French: Affaire des Placards) was an incident in which anti-Catholic posters appeared in public places in Paris and in four major provincial cities, Blois, Rouen, Tours and Orléans, in the night of the 17 to 18 October 1534. One of the posters was posted on the bedchamber door of King Francis I at Amboise, an affront and a breach of security that left him shaken. The Affaire des Placards brought an end to the conciliatory policies of Francis, which had formerly attempted to protect the Protestants from the more extreme measures of the Parlement de Paris, and also of the public entreaties for moderation of Philip Melanchthon.

The Polish Post (Polish: Poczta Polska S.A., pronounced [ˈpɔtʂta ˈpɔlska]) is the state postal administration of Poland, initially founded in 1558. The company is headquartered in Warsaw and employs over 67,000 people. It is the largest mail-handling company in the country, which additionally provides courier, banking, insurance and logistics services. The digital services, such as neo-stamps, neo-letters and neo-postcards, are available through the Internet-based platform Envelo. The two large subsidiary companies of Poczta Polska are Capital Group Poczta Polska (Post Bank) and the Pocztowe Towarzystwo Ubezpieczeń Wzajemnych (Postal Mutual Insurance Association). The State Treasury of Poland is the sole owner and shareholder of Polish Post. The current name of the ministry responsible for the Polish Post is Ministry of State Assets.

SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, was a Type Ia supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Appearing in October 1604, it is the most recent supernova in the Milky Way galaxy to have been unquestionably observed by the naked eye, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs (20,000 light-years) from Earth. Before the adoption of the current naming system for supernovae, it was named for Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who described it in De Stella Nova.

Louis XIII (French pronunciation: [lwi tʁɛz]; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown. Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de' Medici, acted as regent during his minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italian favourites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court. Louis XIII, taciturn and suspicious, relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and then Cardinal Richelieu, to govern the Kingdom of France. The King and the Cardinal are remembered for establishing the Académie française, and ending the revolt of the French nobility. They systematically destroyed the castles of defiant lords, and denounced the use of private violence (dueling, carrying weapons, and maintaining private armies). By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu had established "the royal monopoly of force" as the ruling doctrine. The king's reign was also marked by the struggles against the Huguenots and Habsburg Spain.

The Regicides of Charles I were the men responsible for the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 — the fifty-nine commissioners who signed the execution warrant. This followed his conviction for treason by the High Court of Justice. After the 1660 Stuart Restoration, the fifty-nine signatories were among a total of 104 individuals accused of direct involvement in the sentencing and execution. They were excluded from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, which granted a general amnesty for acts committed during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and subsequent Interregnum. Regicide is not a term recognised in English law, and there is no agreed definition, with some historians including all 104 individuals. Twenty of the fifty-nine Commissioners died before the Restoration, including John Bradshaw, who presided over the trial, and Oliver Cromwell, its originator. Eight of the survivors were executed, sixteen died awaiting trial or later in prison, two were pardoned, and the remainder escaped into exile.

Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651 and King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II was the oldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I's execution at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on 5 February 1649. However, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth with a republican government eventually led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. A political crisis after Cromwell's death in 1658 resulted in the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and Charles was invited to return to Britain. On 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday, he was received in London to public acclaim. Charles's English Parliament enacted the Clarendon Code, to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Charles acquiesced to these new laws even though he favoured a policy of religious tolerance. The major foreign policy issue of his early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670, he entered into the Treaty of Dover, an alliance with his cousin, King Louis XIV of France. Louis agreed to aid him in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay him a pension, and Charles secretly promised to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates's fabrication of a supposed Popish Plot sparked the Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, had become a Catholic. The crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories and, after the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681 and ruled alone until his death in 1685. A patron of the arts and sciences, Charles became known for his affability and friendliness, and for allowing his subjects easy access to his person. But he also showed an almost impenetrable reserve, especially concerning his political agendas. His court gained a reputation for moral laxity. Charles's marriage to Catherine of Braganza produced no surviving children, but the king acknowledged at least 12 illegitimate children by various mistresses. He was succeeded by his brother James.

In the Great Northern War (1700–1721), a coalition led by Russia successfully contested the supremacy of Sweden in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I of Russia, Frederick IV of Denmark–Norway and Augustus II the Strong of Saxony-Poland-Lithuania. Frederick IV and Augustus II were defeated by Sweden, under Charles XII, and forced out of the alliance in 1700 and 1706, respectively, but rejoined it in 1709 after the defeat of Charles XII at the Battle of Poltava. George I of Great Britain and the Electorate of Hanover joined the coalition in 1714 for Hanover and in 1717 for Britain, and Frederick William I of Brandenburg-Prussia joined it in 1715. Charles XII led the Swedish Army. Swedish allies included Holstein-Gottorp, several Polish magnates under Stanisław I Leszczyński (1704–1710) and Cossacks under the Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1708–1710). The Ottoman Empire temporarily hosted Charles XII of Sweden and intervened against Peter I. The war began when Denmark–Norway, Saxony and Russia, sensing an opportunity as Sweden was ruled by the young Charles XII, formed a coalition against Sweden. Denmark invaded Sweden's ally Holstein-Gottorp, while Saxony and Russia declared war on the Swedish Empire and attacked Swedish Livonia and Swedish Ingria, respectively. Sweden parried the Danes at Travendal (August 1700) and the Russians at Narva (November 1700), and in a counter-offensive pushed Augustus II's forces through the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to Saxony, dethroning Augustus on the way (September 1706) and forcing him to acknowledge defeat in the Treaty of Altranstädt (October 1706). The treaty also secured the extradition and execution of Johann Reinhold Patkul, architect of the alliance seven years earlier. Meanwhile, the forces of Peter I had recovered from defeat at Narva and gained ground in Sweden's Baltic provinces, where they cemented Russian access to the Baltic Sea by founding Saint Petersburg in 1703. Charles XII moved from Saxony into Russia to confront Peter, but the campaign ended in 1709 with the destruction of the main Swedish army at the decisive Battle of Poltava (in present-day Ukraine) and Charles' exile in the Ottoman town of Bender. The Ottoman Empire defeated the Russian–Moldavian army in the Pruth River Campaign, but that peace treaty was in the end without great consequence to Russia's position. After Poltava, the anti-Swedish coalition revived and subsequently Hanover and Prussia joined it. The remaining Swedish forces in plague-stricken areas south and east of the Baltic Sea were evicted, with the last city, Tallinn, falling in the autumn of 1710. By 1714, Russia had occupied Finland. On 18 October 1709, Sweden received Denmark-Norway’s declaration of war, presented as a response to the alleged maltreatment of Danes by Sweden in Scania. Swedish victory at Helsingborg amounted to only a brief respite before ultimate defeat in the west. From June 1716, Denmark and Russia prepared a joint invasion of Sweden proper, which the Tsar envisioned as dealing the Swedish king a decisive blow. Earlier that year, Charles XII had invaded south-eastern Norway, but a string of successive defeats, together with the systematic disruption of Swedish logistics by the Norwegians, had forced him back towards the border. In June and July, a renewed offensive against Fredrikshald, or Halden, was frustrated by the combined efforts of the town's garrison and inhabitants. The campaign was finally abandoned after Tordenskjold, the Norwegian naval hero, captured almost the entire Swedish supply and transport fleet at Dynekilen, forcing Charles XII to finally retreat across the border. In the meantime, a Danish-Russian invasion force was assembling across the strait. Severe delays, however, pushed the operation into autumn and, together with growing distrust and strategic divergence between the allied monarchs, ultimately led to its cancellation. In 1718, Sweden launched a second and even larger campaign against Norway. Charles XII was ultimately killed in the trenches before Fredriksten, while a second Swedish field army was forced onto the Carolean Death March during its retreat from Trøndelag, losing most of its men. The failure of the Norwegian campaign constituted a severe strategic defeat for Sweden and effectively brought its offensive war to an end. The war ended with the defeat of Sweden, leaving Russia as the new dominant power in the Baltic region and as a new major force in European politics. The Western powers, Great Britain and France, became caught up in the separate War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), which broke out over the Bourbon Philip of Anjou's succession to the Spanish throne and a possible joining of France and Spain. The formal conclusion of the Great Northern War came with the Swedish-Hanoverian and Swedish-Prussian Treaties of Stockholm (1719), the Dano-Swedish Treaty of Frederiksborg (1720), and the Russo-Swedish Treaty of Nystad (1721). By these treaties Sweden ceded its exemption from the Sound Dues and lost the Baltic provinces and the southern part of Swedish Pomerania. The peace treaties also ended its alliance with Holstein-Gottorp. Hanover gained Bremen-Verden, Brandenburg-Prussia incorporated the Oder estuary (Stettin Lagoons), Russia secured the Baltic Provinces, and Denmark strengthened its position in Schleswig-Holstein. In Sweden, the absolute monarchy had come to an end with the death of Charles XII, and Sweden's Age of Liberty began.

Ascanio in Alba, K. 111, is an opera in two parts (Festa teatrale in due parti) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Parini. The pastoral work was commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa for the wedding of her son, Archduke Ferdinand Karl, to Maria Beatrice d'Este on 15 October 1771.

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 monarchy 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 in 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 in a panic, on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the Continental army, the British Parliament 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, 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 pretty 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 armed force led under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that also proved a crucial role 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.

The Siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown and the surrender at Yorktown, took place in 1781 and was the final major land engagement of the American Revolutionary War. It was won decisively by the Continental Army, led by George Washington, with support from the Marquis de Lafayette and French Army troops, led by Comte de Rochambeau, and a French Navy force commanded by the Comte de Grasse, defeating the British Army commanded by British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis. The French and American armies united north of New York City in the summer of 1781. Following the arrival of dispatches from France that included the possibility of support from the French West Indies fleet of the Comte de Grasse, disagreements arose between Washington and Rochambeau on whether to ask de Grasse for assistance in besieging New York or in military operations against a British army in Virginia. On the advice of Rochambeau, de Grasse informed them of his intent to sail to the Chesapeake Bay, where Cornwallis had taken command of the British army. Cornwallis, at first given confusing orders by his superior officer, Henry Clinton, was eventually ordered to build a defensible deep-water port, which he began to do at Yorktown. Cornwallis's movements in Virginia were shadowed by a Continental Army force led by Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. When word of de Grasse's decision to engage the British navy at the Chesapeake Bay arrived in New York, the American and French armies began moving south toward Virginia, engaging in deception tactics to lead the British to believe a siege of New York was planned. De Grasse sailed from the West Indies and arrived at Chesapeake Bay at the end of August, bringing additional troops and creating a naval blockade of Yorktown. In the beginning of September, he defeated a British fleet led by Sir Thomas Graves, which was dispatched to relieve Cornwallis at the Battle of the Chesapeake. As a result of this victory, de Grasse blocked any reinforcement or escape by sea for Cornwallis and also disembarked the heavy siege guns required by the allied land forces. Washington and Rochambeau arrived at Yorktown on September 28, 1781. Washington moved the army closer to the British defenses on September 29. The American and French army and naval forces had completely surrounded Cornwallis. After initial preparations, the Americans and French built their first parallel and began the bombardment. With the British defense weakened, on October 14, 1781, Washington sent two columns to attack the last major remaining British outer defenses. A French column under Vicomte de Deux-Ponts took Redoubt No. 9 and an American column under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton took Redoubt No. 10. With these defenses, the allies were able to finish their second parallel. With the Franco-American artillery closer and its bombardment more intense than ever, the British position began to deteriorate rapidly. Cornwallis asked for capitulation terms on October 17. After two days of negotiation, the surrender ceremony occurred on October 19; Cornwallis was absent from the ceremony. With the capture of more than 7,000 British soldiers, negotiations between the United States and Great Britain began, resulting in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.

An invasion of Curaçao was launched by French forces against the Dutch colony in 1800 during the War of the Second Coalition. French forces landed on the island on 22 July, and on 5 September attacked and captured a fort protecting the town of Willemstad. The American consul there sent for help, and on 10 September the Dutch governor of the island surrendered to the British frigate HMS Nereide under the command of Frederick Watkins. On 22 September the American sloops USS Patapsco and USS Merrimack arrived, and on 23 September the Patapsco sailed into the harbor and landed troops to reinforce the garrison protecting the town. On 23 and 24 September the French fired upon the defenders, consequently exchanging cannon and musket fire with them throughout the day and night. Though it appeared a French assault was imminent, French forces left the island during the night. Significantly, the French suffered many killed or wounded in contrast to two American wounded. The British occupied the colony, and American forces sailed away.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ʒak dɛsalin]; Haitian Creole: Jan-Jak Desalin; 20 September 1758 – 17 October 1806) was the first Haitian Emperor, leader of the Haitian Revolution, and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1805 constitution. Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines was later named Emperor of Haiti as Jacques I (1804–1806) by generals of the Haitian Revolutionary army and ruled in that capacity until being assassinated in 1806. He spearheaded the resistance against French rule of Saint-Domingue, and eventually became the architect of the 1804 massacre of the remaining White French residents of newly independent Haiti. Alongside Toussaint Louverture, he has been referred to as one of the fathers of the nation of Haiti. Under the rule of Dessalines, Haiti became the first country in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery. Dessalines served as an officer in the French army when Saint-Domingue was fending off Spanish and British incursions. Later he rose to become a commander in the revolt against France. As Toussaint Louverture's principal lieutenant, he led many successful engagements, including the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot. In 1802, Louverture was betrayed and captured, and sent to prison in France, where he died. Thereafter, Dessalines became the leader of the revolution and Général-Chef de l'Armée Indigène on 18 May 1803. His forces defeated the French army at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November 1803. Saint-Domingue was declared independent on 29 November and then as the independent Republic of Haiti on 1 January 1804, under the leadership of Dessalines, chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general. He ordered the 1804 Haitian massacre of the remaining Coloniser French population in Haiti, killing between 3,000 and 5,000 people, and an exodus of thousands. Some historians cite the threat of a French reinvasion and reinstatement of slavery as one of the reasons for the massacre. Dessalines excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French, as well as Germans who did not take part in the slave trade. He granted them full citizenship and classified them as black. Tensions remained with the minority mixed-race population, who had gained some education and property during the colonial period. As Emperor, Dessalines enforced plantation labor to promote the economy and began an autocratic rule. In 1806, he was assassinated by members of his own administration and dismembered by a violent mob shortly thereafter. By the beginning of the 20th century, Dessalines began to be reassessed as an icon of Haitian nationalism. The national anthem of Haiti, "La Dessalinienne", written in 1903, is named in his honor.

The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, London, on 17 October 1814. It took place when one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels: between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 L; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released in total. The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery. Eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". The brewery was nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from HM Excise on the lost beer. The brewing industry gradually stopped using large wooden vats after the accident. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is now where the brewery once stood. Meux & Co went into liquidation in 1961.

The Massacre of Aleppo (Arabic: قومة حلب, romanized: Qawmat Ḥalab), often referred to simply as The Events (al-hawādith), was a riot perpetrated by Muslim residents of Aleppo, largely from the eastern quarters of the city, against Christian residents, largely located in the northern suburbs of Judayde (Jdeideh) and Salibeh. The riot began on the evening of October 17, 1850, and ended two days later on October 19, 1850. The riot resulted in numerous deaths, including that of Peter VII Jarweh, the Syriac Catholic Patriarch. The riot is generally characterized as the culmination of tensions between the diverse groups that had historically populated Aleppo, including tensions between the Muslim and Christian communities and between Janissaries and the ashraf. Non-Aleppine ethnic groups, including Bedouin, have also been blamed for the riot, especially by local historians. It has been argued, however, that The Events reflect instead more complex social dynamics, particularly the disruption caused by the sweeping reforms implemented by the Ottoman Empire in its nineteenth-century attempts at modernization, also known as the Tanzimat, and by the Empire's incorporation into the modern world economic system. The aftermath included the replacement of the governor of Aleppo, leading to the eruption of fighting between Janissary and ashraf groups on November 5. With the intervention of state forces utilizing artillery purchased from the United Kingdom, the renewed fighting ended by November 8. Attempts at the restitution of stolen property and the bringing of legal charges against rioters spurred on further disagreement between Muslim and Christian residents. The massacre is considered by historians to be particularly important in Aleppine history since it represents the first time that disturbances pitted Muslims against Christians in the region. Additionally, the implications of The Events include integral insights into the social, political and economic elements of the 19th-century Middle East.

The Open Championship, often referred to as The Open or the British Open outside of the UK, is the oldest golf tournament in the world, and one of the most prestigious. Founded in 1860, it was originally held annually at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. Later the venue rotated among a select group of coastal links golf courses in the United Kingdom. It is organised by The R&A. The Open is one of the four men's major golf championships, the others being the Masters Tournament, the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open. Since the PGA Championship moved to May in 2019, the Open has been chronologically the fourth and final major tournament of the year. It is held in mid-July. It is called The Open because it is in theory open to all, i.e. professional and amateur golfers. In practice, the current event is a professional tournament in which a small number of the world's leading amateurs also play, by invitation or qualification. The success of the tournament has led to many other open golf tournaments to be introduced around the world. The winner is named "The Champion Golfer of the Year", a title that dates to the first Open in 1860, and receives the Claret Jug, a trophy first awarded in 1872. The reigning champion is New Zealand’s Ryan Fox, who won the 2026 Open at Royal Birkdale with a score of 270 (10 under par).

The Cullin-la-ringo massacre, also known as the Wills tragedy, was a massacre of European settlers by Indigenous Australians that occurred on 17 October 1861, north of modern-day Springsure in Central Queensland, Australia. Nineteen men, women and children were killed in the attack, including Horatio Wills, the owner of Cullin-la-ringo station. It is the single largest massacre of European settlers by Aboriginal people in Australian history. In the weeks afterwards, police, native police and civilian posses carried out "one of the most lethal punitive expeditions in frontier history", hunting down and killing up to 370 members of the Gayiri Aboriginal people implicated in the massacre. The most recent study by the University of Newcastle Colonial Frontier Massacres experts puts the figure at 90 dead.

The First Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and involved actions of the Balkan League (the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro) against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan states' combined armies overcame the initially numerically inferior (significantly superior by the end of the conflict) and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies, achieving rapid success. The war was a comprehensive and unmitigated disaster for the Ottomans, who lost 83% of their European territories and 69% of their European population. As a result of the war, the League captured and partitioned almost all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories in Europe. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albania, which dissatisfied the Serbs. Bulgaria, meanwhile, was dissatisfied over the division of the spoils in Macedonia and attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 June 1913, which provoked the start of the Second Balkan War. During the war, many civilians were either killed or forced to flee their homes.

Leeds United Football Club is a professional football club based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football.

Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he was imprisoned at the age of 33.

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Wilhelm Münzenberg (14 August 1889 – June 1940) was a German communist activist and publisher who served as the first head of the Young Communist International from 1919 to 1921 and as a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1933. He also founded the famine relief and propaganda organization Workers International Relief in 1921. He was a leading propagandist for the Soviet-allied Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Era, but later grew disenchanted with the Soviet Union due to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s. Condemned by Stalin to be purged and arrested for treason, Münzenberg left the KPD and in Paris became a leader of the German émigré anti-fascism and anti-Stalinist community until forced to flee the Nazi advance into France in 1940. Arrested and imprisoned by the Daladier government in France, he escaped prison camp only to be found dead a few months later in a forest near the commune of Saint-Marcellin, France. Walter Laqueur described him as "a cultural impresario of genius".

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 Burma Railway, also known as the Siam–Burma Railway, Thai–Burma Railway and similar names, or locally as the Death Railway, is a 415 km (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma. It was built from 1940 to 1943 by abducted Southeast Asian civilians and captured Allied soldiers forced to work by the Japanese, to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. The name used by the Imperial Japanese Government was Tai–Men Rensetsu Tetsudō (泰緬連接鉄道), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway.

Sobibor was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.

Loyalty Day is a commemoration day in Argentina. It remembers 17 October 1945, when a large labour demonstration at the Plaza de Mayo, in downtown Buenos Aires, demanded the liberation of Juan Domingo Perón, jailed on Isla Martín García. It is considered the foundational moment of the Peronist movement.

The 17 October affair was an event during which Indonesian soldiers pressured the president to disband the Provisional People's Representative Council, at the behest of the administration's chief of staff, along with the commander of the armed forces. The demand was made of President Sukarno while the Merdeka Palace was surrounded.

Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022.

Maurice Papon was a French civil servant, mass murderer and Nazi collaborator who was convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the occupation of France. Papon led the police in major prefectures from the 1930s to the 1960s, before he became a Gaullist politician. When he was secretary general for the police in Bordeaux during World War II, he participated in the deportation of more than 1,600 Jews. He is also known for his activities in the Algerian War (1954–1962), during which he tortured insurgent prisoners as prefect of the Constantinois department, and ordered, as prefect of the Paris police, the 1961 Paris massacre of pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) demonstrators for violating a curfew that he had "advised".

Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Whether apartheid exists in Israel proper is a matter of controversy. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler populations of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.

The 1964 New York World's Fair was an international exposition at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City, United States. The fair included exhibitions, activities, performances, films, art, and food presented by 80 nations, 24 U.S. states, and nearly 350 American companies. The five sections of the 646-acre (261 ha) fairground were the Federal and State, International, Transportation, Lake Amusement, and Industrial areas. The fair's theme was "Peace through Understanding", and its symbol was the Unisphere, a stainless-steel model of Earth. Initially, the fair had 139 pavilions, and 34 concessions and shows.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for a significant portion of his artistic life. He began his apprenticeship in Milan in 1584, and during the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

The October Crisis was a chain of political events in Canada that started in October 1970 when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross from his Montreal residence. These events saw Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoking the War Measures Act for the first time in Canadian history during peacetime. Laporte was assassinated over the course of the crisis.

In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began after Egypt and Syria launched a large-scale surprise attack in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the territories that they had lost to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 American horror novel by author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires.

Lufthansa Flight 181, a Boeing 737-200 jet airliner named Landshut, was hijacked on 13 October 1977 by four militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine while en route from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. The hijacking aimed to secure the release of eleven notorious Red Army Faction leaders held in West German prisons and two Palestinians held in Turkey. This event was part of the so-called German Autumn, intended to increase pressure on the West German government. The hijackers diverted the flight to several locations before ending in Mogadishu, Somalia, where the crisis concluded in the early morning hours of 18 October 1977 under the cover of darkness. The West German counter-terrorism unit GSG 9, with ground support from the Somali Armed Forces, stormed the aircraft, rescuing all 87 passengers and four crew members. The captain of the flight was killed by the hijackers earlier in the ordeal.

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa or Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity and a Catholic saint.

The Department of Education Organization Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1979, which created the Department of Education. The new department was split off from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which the Act also renamed the Department of Health and Human Services.

Holy See–United Kingdom relations are foreign relations between the Holy See and the United Kingdom.

Uganda Airlines Flight 775 was a Boeing 707, registration 5X-UBC, that crashed while attempting to land at Rome-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy on 17 October 1988. Out of the 52 occupants onboard, 33 were killed.

Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As the leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.

Yoshihiro Hattori was a Japanese student on an exchange program to the United States who was shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The shooting happened when Hattori, on his way to a Halloween party, went to the wrong house by mistake. Property owner Rodney Peairs fatally shot Hattori, erroneously thinking that he was trespassing with criminal intent. The killing and Peairs's trials received worldwide attention, initiating discussion about race relations and attitudes toward Asians in the United States.

Dmitry Yuryevich Kholodov was a Russian journalist who investigated corruption in the military and was assassinated on 17 October 1994 in Moscow. His assassination was the first of many killings of journalists in Russia.

The Hatfield rail crash was a railway accident on 17 October 2000, at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. It was caused by a rolling contact fatigue-induced derailment, killing four people and injuring more than 70.

Rehavam Ze'evi was an Israeli general and politician who founded the far-right nationalist Moledet party. He mainly advocated for the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population through population transfer.

The Parque Central Complex fire was a fire on 17 October 2004, that destroyed almost one-third of the East Tower of the Parque Central Urban Complex in Caracas, Venezuela. At least 20 floors were completely destroyed by the fire, although the building was able to withstand more than 15 hours of fire without collapsing due to its strong structure.

The Syrian civil war was an armed conflict that began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring. The Assad regime responded to the protests with lethal force, which led to a series of defections, the emergence of armed opposition groups, and the civilian uprising descending into a civil war. The war lasted almost 14 years and culminated in the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Many sources regard this as the end of the civil war even though clashes have continued into 2026.

The Cannabis Act is a law which legalized recreational cannabis use in Canada in combination with its companion legislation Bill C-46, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code. The law is a milestone in the legal history of cannabis in Canada, alongside the 1923 prohibition.

On 17 October 2018, a school shooting and bombing attack occurred at the Kerch Polytechnic College in Kerch, Crimea. The perpetrator, 18-year-old student Vladislav Roslyakov, killed 20 people and wounded 73 others before killing himself. It was the deadliest school shooting in Russia or Ukraine since the 2004 Beslan school siege.

Culiacán, officially Culiacán Rosales, is the capital and largest city of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. Located within the Culiacán Municipality, the city was founded on 29 September 1531, by the Spanish conquistadors Lázaro de Cebreros and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán. It was originally named "Villa de San Miguel", in honor of its patron saint Michael the Archangel.

The 17 October Protests, commonly referred to as the 17 October Revolution or Hirak or Thawrah, were a series of civil protests in Lebanon that began after the Lebanese cabinet announced financial measures on 17 October 2019. These nationwide protests were triggered by planned taxes on gasoline, tobacco, and VoIP calls on applications such as WhatsApp, but quickly expanded into a country-wide condemnation of sectarian rule, the stagnation of the economy, unemployment, endemic corruption in the public sector, legislation that was perceived to shield the ruling class from accountability and failures of the government to provide basic services, such as electricity, water, and sanitation.

On 17 October 2023, an explosion took place in a courtyard of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City during the Gaza war, resulting in a large number of displaced Palestinians seeking shelter there being killed or injured.