Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 17

This is a list of selected February 17 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← February 16	February 18 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

• 
  Giordano Bruno—See Giordano Bruno#A note on the Bruno "portraits": "Its authenticity is doubtful".
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  London congestion charging, outbound sign
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  Thomas Jefferson
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  Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, collectively known as Gomburza
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  Chaim Weizmann
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  Damage caused by the 2006 Southern Leyte landslide
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  Armory Show poster

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
Tanis Diena	Tanis Diena and date not mentioned in article
1400 – The body of the deposed king Richard II was put on display in London's Old St Paul's Cathedral, after his death in Pontefract Castle.	date not cited; maybe should be moved to July 16 (date of coronation)
1600 – Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, best-known as a proponent of heliocentrism and the infinity of the universe, was burned at the stake as a heretic for his denial of several core Catholic doctrines by the Roman Inquisition.	refimprove section
1801 – The U.S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as President and Aaron Burr as Vice President, resolving an electoral tie in the 1800 presidential election.	unreferenced section
1865 – American Civil War: The Union Army captured Columbia, South Carolina; subsequently a large fire of unknown origin destroyed much of the city.	date not cited
1872 – Three priests collectively known as Gomburza were executed in Manila, Philippines, by Spanish colonial authorities on charges of subversion arising from the Cavite mutiny.	refimprove
1933 – The American weekly news magazine Newsweek was first published.	refimprove section
1936 – The Phantom, one of the first modern comic book superheroes with the hallmark skintight costume and a mask with no visible pupils, made his first appearance in a daily newspaper comic strip.	refimprove section
1949 – Chaim Weizmann began his term as the first President of Israel.	lots of CN tags
1959 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to measure cloud cover distribution.	refimprove
1973 – The first ever OFC Nations Cup match was played.	unreferenced
1979 – About 120,000 troops of the People's Liberation Army of China crossed into northern Vietnam, starting the Sino-Vietnamese War.	unreferenced section, refimprove section
1995 – In the presence of the four guarantor countries of the Rio Protocol, Ecuador and Peru signed a peace declaration confirming a ceasefire, leading to the official end of the Cenepa War eleven days later.	refimprove section
2003 – The London congestion charge, a fee that is levied on motorists travelling within designated parts of Central London, came into effect.	outdated
Born on this day: Billie Joe Armstrong (1972)	referencing issues.

Eligible

• 1621 – Myles Standish was elected as the first commander of the Plymouth Colony militia.
• 1913 – In the U.S. National Guard's 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, the Armory Show opened, introducing Americans to avant-garde and modern art.
• 1944 – World War II: The United States Navy began Operation Hailstone, a massive naval air and surface attack against the Japanese naval and air base at Truk in the Caroline Islands.
• 1964 – Gabonese military officers overthrew President Léon M'ba, but France, honoring a 1960 treaty, forcibly reinstated M'ba the next day.
• 1978 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb at the La Mon restaurant near Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing twelve people and injuring thirty others.
• 2011 – Arab Spring: Bahrain security forces launched a pre-dawn raid on protesters at the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, killing four of them, and in Libya, a "Day of Rage" took place with protests across the country against the government of Muammar Gaddafi.
• Born/died this day: María de las Mercedes Barbudo (d. 1849) · Wally Pipp (b. 1893) · Karen O'Connor (b. 1958) · Ed Sheeran (b. 1991) ·

Notes

• Bahraini protests of 2011–2014 appears on February 14 and March of loyalty to martyrs appears on February 22, so Bloody Thursday should not be used in the same year.

February 17: Independence Day in Kosovo (2008)

Geraldine Farrar as Madama Butterfly

• 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: Napoleon led a French army to a crushing victory in the Battle of Mormant, nearly destroying a Russian division.
• 1859 – The French Navy captured the Citadel of Saigon, a fortress that was defended by 1,000 Nguyễn dynasty soldiers, en route to conquering Saigon and other regions of southern Vietnam.
• 1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly (Geraldine Farrar in the title role pictured) premiered at La Scala in Milan, generating negative reviews that forced him to rewrite the opera.
• 1974 – A U.S. Army soldier stole a Bell UH-1 helicopter and landed it on the White House South Lawn.
• 2006 – A massive landslide in the Philippine province of Southern Leyte killed over 1,000 people.

Jovian (d. 364) · Isabelle Eberhardt (b. 1877) · Amber Merritt (b. 1993)

More anniversaries:

• February 16
• February 17
• February 18