17th of September

Today is the 260th day of the year, with 105 days remaining until the end of the year.

480 BC - The Battle of Thermopylae, fought between 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas, and Achaemenid Empire begins.

1630 AD - The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.

1778 - The Treaty of Fort Pitt is signed.  It is the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native American tribe, the Lenape or known as the Delaware Indians.

1787 - The United States Constitution is adopted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1858 - Dred Scott, an African-American slave who sued unsuccessfully for his freedom and that of his wife and two daughters because they were slaves  in territories where the institution was illegal, is born.

1862 - George B. McClellan halts the advance of Robert E. Lee's Confederate army at the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history.

1908 - The Wright Flyer, flown by Orville Wright with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as a passenger, crashes killing the latter.  He becomes the first airplane fatality.

1916 - Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron," a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkrafte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.

1928 - The Okeechobee Hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing upwards of 2,500 people.  It is the third deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

1939 - Taisto Maki becomes the first man to run 10,000 meters in under 30 minutes.

1940 - Following the German defeat in the Battle of Britain, Hitler decides to postpone Operation Sea Lion indefinitely.

1944 - Allied Airborne troops parachute into the Netherlands as the first half of Operation Market Garden.

1947 - James V. Forrestal is sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense of the United States.

1961 - The world's first retractable-dome stadium opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it is named the Civic Arena.

1976 - The first space shuttle, Enterprise, is unveiled by NASA.

1983 - Vanessa Williams becomes the first African-American Miss America.

2001 - The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression.

2006 - Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years.