What happened on February 17 ?

1500 - Battle of Hemmingstedt.

1600 - Philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt alive at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, charged of heresy.

1621 - Miles Standish is appointed as first commander of Plymouth colony.

1753 - February 17 is followed by March 1 as Sweden moves to the Gregorian from the Julian calendar.

1801 - An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

1814 - Battle of Mormans

1819 - The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise.

1854 - The British recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State.

1864 - American Civil War: CSS H. L. Hunley is the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.

1865 - American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina burns as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forces.

1867 - The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.

1895 - Swan Lake, with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is first performed at full length in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1913 - The Armory Show opens in New York City, displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.

1924 - In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller sets a new world record in the 100-yard freestyle swimming competition with a time of 52-2/5 seconds.

1933 - The magazine Newsweek is published for the first time.

1933 - The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States.

1944 - World War II: Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins. The battle ends in an American victory on February 22.

1944 - World War II: Operation Hailstone begins. U.S. naval air, surface, and submarine attack against Truk (Chuuk), Japan's main base in the central Pacific, in support of the Eniwetok invasion.

1947 - The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union.

1957 - A fire at a home for the elderly in Warrenton, Missouri kills 72 people.

1958 - Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare of Assisi (1193~1253) the patron saint of television

1959 - The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.

1962 - A storm kills more than 300 people in Hamburg, West Germany.

1964 - In Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court of the United States rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.

1968 - In Springfield, Massachusetts the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens.

1972 - Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceed those of Ford Model-T.

1974 - Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House with a stolen helicopter.

1979 - The Sino-Vietnamese War begins.

1992 - A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sentences serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to life in prison.

1995 - Colin Ferguson is convicted of six counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and later receives a 200+ year sentence.

1995 - The Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador ends on a cease-fire brokered by the UN.

1996 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

2000 - Microsoft releases Windows 2000.