THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 17

August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 136 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56).

NATIONAL BLACK CAT APPRECIATION DAY
1560 – The Roman Catholic Church is overthrown and Protestantism is established as the national religion in Scotland.


1585 – A first group of colonists sent by Sir Walter Raleigh under the charge of Ralph Lane lands in the New World to create Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina.


1807 – Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York, on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.


1862 – American Civil War: Major General J. E. B. Stuart is assigned command of all the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.


1863 – American Civil War: In Charleston, South Carolina, Union batteries and ships bombard Confederate-held Fort Sumter.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Gainesville ― Confederate forces defeat Union troops near Gainesville, Florida.

1943 – World War II: The U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission.


1943 – World War II: The U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.


1959 – Quake Lake is formed by the magnitude 7.5 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake near Hebgen Lake in Montana.


1978 – Double Eagle II becomes first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it lands in Miserey, France near Paris, 137 hours after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.


1998 – Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; later that same day he admits before the nation that he "misled people" about the relationship.

2005 – Over 500 bombs are set off by terrorists at 300 locations in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh.


2009 – An accident at the Sayano–Shushenskaya Dam in Khakassia, Russia, kills 75 and shuts down the hydroelectric power station, leading to widespread power failure in the local area.

2015 – A bomb explodes near the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, killing at least 19 people and injuring 123 others.


TODAY'S BIRTHS

1607 – Pierre de Fermat, French lawyer and mathematician, Fermat's Last Theorem in Number Theory (d. 1665)

1786 – Davy Crockett, American soldier and politician, died defending the Alamo (d. 1836)

1896 – Leslie Groves, American general and engineer, military officer in charge of the Manhattan Project (d. 1970)

1914 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., American lawyer and politician (d. 1988)

1920 – Lida Moser, American photographer and author (d. 2014)

1936 – Margaret Heafield Hamilton, American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner.

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.