History of the Day for:
March 17
- 45 B.C.: Julius Caesar defeated the Pompeians at the Battle of Munda in Spain. The Pompeians, led by two sons of Pompey the Great, lost over 30,000 men.
- 461 A.D.: According to tradition, St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, died in Saul.
- 1776: George Washington forced the British under William Howe to evacuate Boston.
- 1870: The Massachusetts legislature authorized the incorporation of Wellesley Female Seminary. It later became Wellesley College.
- 1906: President Theodore Roosevelt used the term "muckrake" in a speech to the Gridiron Club in Washington.
- 1912: The Camp Fire Girls organization was founded by Mrs. Luther Halsey Gulick of Maine.
- 1919: Singer and entertainer Nat "King" Cole was born.
- 1938: Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was born.
- 1941: The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C.
- 1942: Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.
- 1942: Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lviv Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp (eastern Poland).
- 1945: The Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany collapses, ten days after its capture.
- 1948: Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the NATO Agreement.
- 1950: Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced they had created a new radioactive element, which they named "californium."
- 1959: A major uprising began in Tibet against Chinese rule. The Dalai Lama fled the capital in disguise.
- 1966: A U.S. midget submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb which had fallen from an American bomber into the Mediterranean.
- 1967: Snoopy and Charlie Brown of the comic strip "Peanuts" made the cover of "LIFE" magazine.
- 1969: Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel.
- 1985: William Schroeder set a record for heart transplant patients as he reached his 113th day of life with the artificial organ.
- 1985: Serial killer Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker", commits his first two murders in Los Angeles, California murder spree.
- 1988: A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into a mountainside near the Venezuelan border killing 143.
- 1988: Eritrean War of Independence: The Nadew Command, an Ethiopian army corps in Eritrea, is attacked on three sides by military units of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in the opening action of the Battle of Afabet.
- 1992: A suicide car-bomb kills 29 and injures 242 at the Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- 2000: The 800+ deaths of members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God is considered to be a mass murder and suicide orchestrated by leaders of the cult.
- 2003: British Cabinet Minister Robin Cook, resigns over government plans for the war with Iraq.
- 2004: Unrest in Kosovo results in more than 22 killed, 200 wounded, and the destruction of 35 Serb Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Belgrade and Nis.
- 2008: New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. David Paterson becomes New York State governor.