17th of June

It is the 168th day of the year, with only 197 days remaining.

1462 - Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

1631 - Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth.  Her husband, Mughal emperor Sha Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

1673 - French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the firs Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.

1775 - The Battle of Bunker Hill is fought during the War of American Independence.

1876 - 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse, beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1885 - The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor, as a gift from France.

1901 - The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.

1930 - President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.

1932 - Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol, as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them benefits.

1939 - Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is the last public guillotining in France, outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

1944 - Iceland declares its independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.

1948 - A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.

1960 - The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres of land undervalued at 4 cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.

1963 - The Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District VS. Schempp, against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.

1972 - Five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican Party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

1991 - The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.

1994 - Following a televised low-speed highway chase in a white Ford Bronco, O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.