On this day in history

March 17

31 births · 21 deaths · 5 events

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Anniversary highlights

Event anniversary

2024 Russian presidential election

2 years ago

Born this day

1920

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Would be 106

Oldest record

1967th

Agrippina the Younger

death anniversary

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Famous births31

1078 · 948 yrs

Abdul Qadir Gilani

Abdul Qadir Gilani (c. 1077 or 1078 – c. 1166) was a Hanbali scholar, preacher, and Sufi mystic leader who was the eponym of the Qadiriyya, one of the oldest Sufi orders. He was born in c. 1077 or 1078 in the town of Na'if, Rezvanshahr in Gilan, Persia, and died in 1166 in Baghdad.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ReligionDied aged 87

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Photo: Christies.com · Public domain

1473 · 553 yrs

James IV of Scotland

James IV (17 March 1473 – 9 September 1513) was King of Scotland from 11 June 1488 until his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 40

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1622 · 404 yrs

Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621/22 – 17 August 1676) was a German author. He is best known for his 1669 picaresque novel Simplicius Simplicissimus (German: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus) and the accompanying Simplician Cycle series, including The Life of Courage.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

LiteratureDied aged 54

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Photo: Circle of Lucas de Wael · Public domain

1754 · 272 yrs

Manon Roland

Marie-Jeanne "Manon" Roland de la Platière (Paris, March 17, 1754 – Paris, November 8, 1793), born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, and best known under the name Madame Roland (French pronunciation:) was a French revolutionary, salonnière and writer.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ActivismDied aged 39

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Photo: Unknown Unknown , French School · Public domain

1834 · 192 yrs

Gottlieb Daimler

Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler (German:; 17 March 1834 – 6 March 1900) was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

TechnologyDied aged 65

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1881 · 145 yrs

Walter Rudolf Hess

Walter Rudolf Hess (17 March 1881 – 12 August 1973) was a Swiss physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for mapping the areas of the brain involved in the control of internal organs. He shared the prize with Egas Moniz.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceWould be 145

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Photo: Nobel Foundation · Public domain

1899 · 127 yrs

Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the NKVD from 1938 to 1945 during the country's involvement in the Second World War.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 127

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Photo: Unknown, presumed official · Public domain

1919 · 107 yrs

Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MusicWould be 107

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Photo: William P. Gottlieb · Public domain

1920 · 106 yrs

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (17 March 1920 – 15 August 1975) was a Bangladeshi politician, revolutionary, statesman, activist, and diarist who was the founding president of Bangladesh.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 106

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Photo: Prime Minister's Office of Bangladesh · Public domain

1938 · 88 yrs

Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) was a Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer. Nureyev is widely regarded as the preeminent male ballet dancer of the 20th century, as well as one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MusicWould be 88

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Photo: Allan Warren · CC BY-SA 3.0

1939 · 87 yrs

Giovanni Trapattoni

Giovanni Trapattoni (Italian pronunciation:; born 17 March 1939), popularly nicknamed "Trap", is an Italian former football manager and player, considered the most successful club coach in Italian football.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

SportsAge 87

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Photo: Michael Kranewitter · CC BY-SA 3.0 at

1948 · 78 yrs

William Gibson

William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American and Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk, a category from which he has repeatedly distanced himself.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

LiteratureAge 78

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Photo: Gonzo Bonzo · CC BY-SA 2.0

Showing 12 of 31

Famous deaths21

AD 59 · 1967 yrs

Agrippina the Younger

Julia Agrippina (6 November AD 15 – 23 March AD 59), also referred to as Agrippina the Younger, was Roman empress from AD 49 to 54, the fourth wife and niece of emperor Claudius, and the mother of Nero. Agrippina was one of the most prominent women in the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsDied aged 43

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Photo: Anonymous ( Rome ) Unknown author · CC0

AD 180 · 1846 yrs

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ( or-EE-lee-əs; Latin:; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 58

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Photo: Unknown author · CC BY 2.5

1680 · 346 yrs

François de La Rochefoucauld

François de La Rochefoucauld, 2nd Duke of La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (French:; 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was an accomplished French moralist of the era of French Classical literature and author of Maximes and Memoirs, the only two works of his dense literary œuvre published.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

LiteratureDied aged 66

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Photo: Théodore Chassériau · Public domain

1782 · 244 yrs

Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli (8 February 1700 – 27 March 1782) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 82

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Photo: Johann Nikolaus Grooth · Public domain

1846 · 180 yrs

Friedrich Bessel

Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (German:; 22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the Sun to another star by the method of parallax.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 61

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Photo: Christian Albrecht Jensen · Public domain

1849 · 177 yrs

William II of the Netherlands

William II (Dutch: Willem II, French: Guillaume II; 6 December 1792 – 17 March 1849) was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg from 1840 until his death. William II was the son of William I and Wilhelmine of Prussia.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 56

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Photo: Nicolaas Pieneman · Public domain

1853 · 173 yrs

Christian Doppler

Christian Andreas Doppler (German:; 29 November 1803 – 17 March 1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist. He formulated the principle – now known as the Doppler effect – that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 49

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1917 · 109 yrs

Franz Brentano

Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (German:; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was a German philosopher and psychologist.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PhilosophyDied aged 79

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Photo: user:svencb · Public domain

1926 · 100 yrs

Aleksey Brusilov

Aleksei Alekseyevich Brusilov (US also; Russian: Алексе́й Алексе́евич Бруси́лов, IPA:; 31 August 1853 – 17 March 1926) was a Russian and later Soviet general most noted for the development of new offensive tactics used in the 1916 Brusilov offensive, which was his greatest achievement.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MilitaryDied aged 72

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1956 · 70 yrs

Irène Joliot-Curie

Irène Joliot-Curie (French:; née Curie; 12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. The couple also discovered positron emission during their research.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceWould be 129

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Photo: Nobel Foundation · Public domain

1976 · 50 yrs

Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (Italian:; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 119

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Photo: Marisa Rastellini (Mondadori Publisher) · Public domain

1993 · 33 yrs

Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes MacArthur (née Brown; October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress. Often referred to as the "First Lady of American Theatre", she was the second person and first woman to win the EGOT (an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award), and the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 126

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Photo: Toronto Star · Public domain

Showing 12 of 21

Events5

1921 · 105 yrs

Red Army invasion of Georgia

The Soviet invasion of Georgia (12 February – 17 March 1921), also known as the Georgian–Soviet War or the Red Army invasion of Georgia, was a military campaign by the Russian Soviet Red Army aimed at overthrowing the Social Democratic (Menshevik) government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) and installing a…

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

War

1948 · 78 yrs

Treaty of Brussels

The Treaty of Brussels, also referred to as the Brussels Pact, was the founding treaty of the Western Union (WU) between 1948 and 1954, when it was amended as the Modified Brussels Treaty (MTB) and served as the founding treaty of the Western European Union (WEU) until its termination in 2010.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Politics

2013 · 13 yrs

2013 Australian Grand Prix

The 2013 Australian Grand Prix (formally known as the 2013 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race that was held on 17 March 2013 as the opening round of the 2013 World Championship. The race was held at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Sports

2023 · 3 yrs

The Eras Tour

The Eras Tour was the sixth concert tour by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It began in Glendale, Arizona, United States, on March 17, 2023, and concluded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on December 8, 2024.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Culture

2024 · 2 yrs

2024 Russian presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Russia from 15 to 17 March 2024. It was the eighth presidential election in the country.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Politics

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