Historical Events on April 17
- 1524: New York Bay is discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.
- 1534: Sir Thomas More is imprisoned in the Tower of London.
- 1629: The first commercial fisher is established.
- 1704: The first successful U.S newspaper is published in the city of Boston, Massachussets by John Campbell.
- 1863: Colonel Benjamin Grierson leds Union forces on an attack of central Mississippi as Grierson’s Raid starts during the American Civil War.
- 1864: Plymouth in North Carolina is attacked by Confederate troops as the Battle of Plymouth starts during the American Civil War.
- 1907: More than 11,700 people are processed by Ellis Island Immigration Center on this day.
- 1912: Over 150 striking goldfield workers in Siberia are killed when Russian troops open fire upon them.
- 1941: Yugoslavia surrenders to Germany during WWII.
- 1942: French POW General Henri Giraud escapes from his prison at Konigstein Fortress.
- 1945: Montese, Italy is liberated by Allied forces.
- 1946: French soldiers are withdrawn from Syria.
- 2006: Eleven people are killed and another seventy are wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber sets off a bomb at a Tel Aviv restaurant.
- 2011: The first episode of Game of Thrones is broadcast. The show would become an almost instant hit.
- 2013: In the city of West in Texas, fifteen people are killed and another one hundred and sixty are wounded when an explosion goes off at a fertilizer plant.
- 2014: The first Earth-sized planet is the habitable zone of another star is found by NASA’s Kepler Space Observatory.
Famous Birthdays on April 17
- American firefighter and inventor of modern baseball, Alexander Cartwright is born in 1820.
- American banker and founder of J.P. Morgan & Company, J.P. Morgan is born in 1837.
- English math and theorist, Augustus Edward Hough Love is born in 1863.
- English physiologist Ernest Starling is born in 1866.
- American actor William Holden is born in 1918.
- American journalist Harry Reasoner is born in 1923.