Browse events, births, deaths and holidays on October 17 throughout history.
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…
An explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza kills hundreds of Palestinians during the Gaza war.
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 Sept…
Drug dealers in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico force the government to back down on an arrest.
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 an…
The 17 October Revolution starts in Lebanon.
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 i…
The recreational use of cannabis is legalized in Canada.
On 17 October 2018, a school shooting and bombing attack occurred at the Kerch Polytechnic College in Kerch, Crimea. The perpetrator, Vladislav Roslyakov, who was an 18-year-old s…
A mass shooting and bombing at Kerch Polytechnic College in Crimea kills 21 people including the attacker and injures…
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 triggere…
Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capture the last foothold of the Islamic State of Iraq and the…
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 leas…
A fire that lasted over 15 hours destroyed almost one third of the East Tower of the Parque Central Urban Complex in…
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 …
Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi is assassinated by Hamdi Quran, a member of the PFLP, thus becoming the…
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…
The Hatfield rail crash leads to the collapse of Railtrack.
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 o…
Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov is assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces.
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 w…
Having gone to the wrong house, Japanese student Yoshihiro Hattori is killed by the homeowner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1991 Rudrapur bombings were bombings by Khalistani terrorists in 1991 in Rudrapur city in Indian state of Uttarakhand.
Rudrapur bombings by Sikh separatists, who explode two bombs, during a Ramlila Hindu celebration in Rudrapur,…
Seismic magnitude scales are used to describe the overall strength or "size" of an earthquake. These are distinguished from seismic intensity scales that categorize the intensity …
The 6.9 Mw Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63.
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 …
The East German Politburo votes to remove Erich Honecker from his role as General Secretary.
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 …
Uganda Airlines Flight 775 crashes at Rome–Fiumicino International Airport, in Rome, Italy, killing 33 people.
Holy See–United Kingdom relations are foreign relations between the Holy See and the United Kingdom.
As part of the Holy See–United Kingdom relations a British monarch makes the first state visit to the Vatican.
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 Catholi…
Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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 D…
The Department of Education Organization Act creates the U.S. Department of Education.
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…
The hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu. The remaining hostages are later rescued.
'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 Jeru…
'Salem's Lot, an American vampire novel by Stephen King, is published.