On this day: September 17

Events on September 17

• 1176 Byzantine–Seljuk wars: At the Battle of Myriokephalon in Phrygia, the Seljuq Turks prevented Byzantine forces from taking the interior of Anatolia. Wikipedia
• 1382 Following Louis I's death without a male heir, his daughter Mary was crowned with the title of "King" of Hungary. Wikipedia
• 1658 Portuguese Restoration War: Having crossed the Minho and entered Portuguese territory, a Spanish army was victorious in the Battle of Vilanova. Wikipedia
• 1775 American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army under Richard Montgomery began the Siege of Fort St. Jean in the British province of Quebec. Wikipedia
• 1787 The United States Constitution is signed at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, bringing the Constitutional Convention to an end. Wikipedia
• 1793 War of the Pyrenees: Forces from the French Army of the Eastern Pyrenees defeated two divisions of the Army of Catalonia, ending the furthest Spanish encroachment in their invasion of Roussillon. Wikipedia
• 1849 Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in the U.S. state of Maryland, and later orchestrated the rescues of other slaves via the Underground Railroad. Wikipedia
• 1859 Disgruntled with the legal and political structures of the United States, Joshua Norton distributed letters to various newspapers in San Francisco proclaiming himself to be Emperor Norton. Wikipedia
• 1862 American Civil War: Almost 23,000 total casualties were suffered at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where Confederate and Union troops fought to a tactical stalemate. Wikipedia
• 1878 A British surveyor was detained by the Zulu on the border with the Colony of Natal; a demand for reparations for the incident formed part of an ultimatum that led to the Anglo-Zulu War. Wikipedia
• 1914 Andrew Fisher, who in his previous term as premier oversaw a period of reform unmatched in the Commonwealth until the 1940s, became Prime Minister of Australia for the third time. Wikipedia
• 1916 World War I: Manfred von Richthofen ("The Red Baron"), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France. Wikipedia
• 1939 Second World War: The Royal Navy lost its first warship in the war when German submarine U-29 torpedoed and sank HMS Courageous. Wikipedia
• 1939 World War II: The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, sixteen days after Nazi Germany's attack on the country from the west. Wikipedia
• 1940 World War II: Due to setbacks in the Battle of Britain and approaching autumn weather, Hitler postpones Operation Sea Lion. Wikipedia
• 1958 Tintin in Tibet, the twentieth volume of The Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé and which he regarded as his favourite in the series, began serialisation. Wikipedia
• 1962 NASA announced the Next Nine astronauts selected for the purpose of landing on the moon. Wikipedia
• 1970 The Jordanian army entered Amman as part of operations to oust Palestinian fedayeen from the country in events later known as Black September. Wikipedia
• 1980 Solidarity, a Polish trade union, was founded as the first independent labor union in an Eastern Bloc country. Wikipedia
• 1985 Four years after AIDS was first identified in the United States, Ronald Reagan publicly acknowledged AIDS for the first time. Wikipedia
• 1991 The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet. Wikipedia
• 2001 American president George W. Bush delivered remarks at the Islamic Center of Washington condemning Islamophobia in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Wikipedia
• 2001 The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression. Wikipedia
• 2008 Seven al-Qaeda fighters attack the embassy of the United States in Sanaa, Yemen, leaving 20 people dead. Wikipedia
• 2011 Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication, organized a protest against corporate influence on democracy at Zuccotti Park in New York City that became known as Occupy Wall Street. Wikipedia
• 2013 Grand Theft Auto V earns more than half a billion dollars on its first day of release. Wikipedia
• 2018 The Israeli Air Force conducted missile strikes that hit multiple targets in western Syria; Syrian air defences responding to the strikes accidentally downed a Russian plane. Wikipedia

Born on September 17

• 879 Charles the Simple, Frankish king (died 929) Wikipedia
• 1550 Paul V, pope of the Catholic Church (died 1621) Wikipedia
• 1743 Marquis de Condorcet, French mathematician and political scientist (died 1794) Wikipedia
• 1826 Bernhard Riemann, German-Italian mathematician and academic (died 1866) Wikipedia
• 1857 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian scientist and engineer (died 1935) Wikipedia
• 1859 Billy the Kid, American gunman (died 1881) Wikipedia
• 1869 Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian political scientist, historian, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1938) Wikipedia
• 1883 William Carlos Williams, American poet, short story writer, and essayist (died 1963) Wikipedia
• 1918 Chaim Herzog, Irish-born Israeli general and politician, 6th President of Israel (died 1997) Wikipedia
• 1922 Agostinho Neto, Angolan poet and politician, 1st President of Angola (died 1979) Wikipedia
• 1923 Hank Williams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 1953) Wikipedia
• 1931 Anne Bancroft, American actress (died 2005) Wikipedia
• 1935 Ken Kesey, American novelist, essayist, and poet (died 2001) Wikipedia
• 1944 Reinhold Messner, Italian mountaineer and explorer Wikipedia
• 1950 Narendra Modi, Indian politician; Chief Minister of Gujarat and 14th Prime Minister of India Wikipedia
• 1956 Almazbek Atambayev, Kyrgyz politician, 4th President of Kyrgyzstan Wikipedia
• 1958 Janez Janša, Slovenian politician, 5th Prime Minister of Slovenia Wikipedia
• 1960 Damon Hill, English racing driver and guitarist Wikipedia
• 1965 Bryan Singer, American director, producer, and screenwriter Wikipedia
• 1968 Anastacia, American singer-songwriter Wikipedia
• 1968 Tito Vilanova, Spanish footballer and manager (died 2014) Wikipedia
• 1975 Jimmie Johnson, American race car driver Wikipedia

Died on September 17

• 1179 Hildegard of Bingen, German abbess and polymath (born 1098) Wikipedia
• 1621 Robert Bellarmine, Italian cardinal and saint (born 1542) Wikipedia
• 1665 Philip IV, king of Spain (born 1605) Wikipedia
• 1771 Tobias Smollett, Scottish author and poet (born 1721) Wikipedia
• 1836 Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist and author (born 1748) Wikipedia
• 1863 Alfred de Vigny, French author, poet, and playwright (born 1797) Wikipedia
• 1877 Henry Fox Talbot, English photographer, developed the Calotype Process (born 1800) Wikipedia
• 1879 Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, French architect and theorist (born 1814) Wikipedia
• 1948 Ruth Benedict, American anthropologist and academic (born 1887) Wikipedia
• 1961 Adnan Menderes, Turkish lawyer and politician, 9th Prime Minister of Turkey (born 1899) Wikipedia
• 1980 Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Nicaraguan commander and politician, 73rd President of Nicaragua (born 1925) Wikipedia
• 1994 Karl Popper, Austrian-English philosopher and academic (born 1902) Wikipedia
• 1996 Spiro Agnew, American soldier and politician, 39th Vice President of the United States (born 1918) Wikipedia
• 2021 Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algerian politician, President of Algeria (born 1937) Wikipedia

Holidays and observances

• Australian Citizenship Day Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Albert of Vercelli Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Ariadne of Phrygia Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Blessed Cecilia Eusepi Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Stanislaus Papczyński Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Hildegard of Bingen Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Lambert Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Robert Bellarmine Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Satyrus of Milan Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Socrates and Stephen Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: September 17 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Wikipedia
• Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, observed on the previous Friday if it falls on a Saturday, the following Monday if on a Sunday; and the beginning of the Constitution Week (United States) Wikipedia
• Heroes' Day (Angola) Wikipedia
• Marathwada Liberation Day (Maharashtra) Wikipedia
• National Unity Day (Belarus) (since 2021) Wikipedia
• Operation Market Garden Anniversary is still remembered with parachuting and dedications on this day. (Netherlands) Wikipedia

Sources

• Wikipedia — “September 17” — events, births, deaths and observances (text under CC BY-SA 4.0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikipedia — “Selected anniversaries/September 17” — the anniversaries editors chose for the date and the article each one is about (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikidata — in how many language editions each entry's own article exists, used to fill the lists (CC0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• vacanza/holidays (open-source holiday rules, MIT licence) — holiday rules used to build the lists (checked 2026-10-15)

The events, births, deaths and observances above are from the English Wikipedia article “September 17” and the articles it links to (authors and history), retrieved 2026-10-15 through the Wikimedia “On this day” feed. They are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; this selection is shared under the same licence. Every anniversary that Wikipedia's editors selected for September 17 stays on the list; the remaining places, up to 27 events, 22 births and 14 deaths, go to the entries whose own article — about the event itself, or else the person or thing it is about — appears in the most language editions (counted from Wikidata); an article about a person or thing, which covers far more than one day, counts half. An entry with no article of its own counts, also at half, by the least covered article it links, and one that links only places counts for nothing. The 1787 entry stays as well, and comes first in the one-line summary: we keep a short list, checked by hand, of widely known events that Wikipedia's editors leave out of their selection, usually because the article carries a maintenance notice. Each list runs by year, and the wording is unchanged apart from removing references to pictures, audio and video.