About October 17
October 17, 2025 is the 290th day of the year 2025 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 75 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Friday.
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Libra is the sun sign of a person born on this day. Opal is the modern birthstone for this month. Jasper is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.
According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 123 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
What Happened On October 17
- 539 BC –Cyrus the Great marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile. Cyrus allows the Jews to return to Yehud Medinata and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
- 1448 –Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.
- 1604 –Kepler’s Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus.
- 1610 –French king Louis XIII is crowned in Rheims.
- 1781 –American Revolutionary War: British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown.
- 1806 –Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I of Haiti is assassinated after an oppressive rule.
- 1905 –The October Manifesto issued by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
- 1907 –Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland.
- 1933 –Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.
- 1941 –For the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship.
- 1956 –The first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in Sellafield,in Cumbria, England.
- 1964 –Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies opens the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the middle of the capital Canberra.
- 1966 –A fire at a building in New York, New York kills 12 firefighters, the New York City Fire Department’s deadliest day until the September 11, 2001 attacks.
- 1973 –OPEC starts an oil embargo against a number of western countries, considered to have helped Israel in its war against Syria.
- 1977 –German Autumn: Four days after it is hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaining hostages on board.
- 1979 –Mother Teresa awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 1980 –As part of the Holy See – United Kingdom relations a British monarch makes the first state visit to the Vatican
- 1989 –1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (7.1 on the Richter scale) hits the San Francisco Bay Area and causes 57 deaths directly (and 6 indirectly).
- 1998 –At Jesse, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, a petroleum pipeline explodes killing about 1200 villagers, some of whom are scavenging gasoline.
- 2003 –The pinnacle is fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 56 m and become the World’s tallest highrise.
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