Also Within This Year in History:
1917
Across the globe, 1917 brought upheaval. Russians overthrew Czar Nicholas II, then staged a second revolution, putting Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks in power and sparking a civil war. The U.S. and China both declared war on Germany, entering World War I in its fourth year. Puerto Ricans gained U.S. citizenship. And as America’s first-ever female congresswoman took office, the push for women’s suffrage intensified, with increased picketing and the arrest of many activists, followed by jailhouse hunger strikes, force feedings and mistreatment.
After three days of fierce combat and over 10,000 casualties suffered, the Canadian Corps seizes the previously German‑held Vimy Ridge in northern France on April 12, 1917. Many historians have…
On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. Born Vladimir…
As the major Allied offensive masterminded by Robert Nivelle was failing miserably on the Western Front, British forces in Palestine make their second attempt to capture the city of Gaza…
On April 25, 1917, jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Virginia. She was called “The First Lady of Song,” an honor whose meaning is captured in a…
On April 30, 1917, the so‑called Battle of the Boot marks the end of the British army’s Samarrah Offensive, launched the previous month by Anglo‑Indian forces under the regional commander…
Some six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the U.S Congress passes the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, giving the U.S. president the…
On May 24, 1917, driven by the spectacular success of the German U‑boat submarines and their attacks on Allied and neutral ships at sea, the British Royal Navy introduces a…
One of America’s best‑loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. He was the first American president…
On June 14, 1917, as the soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) travel to join the Allies on the battlefields of World War I in France, United States President…
On June 15, 1917, some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I against Germany, the United States Congress passes the Espionage Act. Enforced largely by A. Mitchell…
During World War I, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops land in France at the port of Saint‑Nazaire. The landing site had been kept secret because of the menace of…
On June 29, 1917, several weeks after King Constantine I abdicates his throne in Athens under pressure from the Allies, Greece announces that it is cutting all diplomatic ties to…
On July 7, 1917, British Army Council Instruction Number 1069 formally establishes the British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), authorizing female volunteers to serve alongside their male counterparts in France…
On July 17, 1917, during the third year of World War I, Britain’s King George V orders the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and…
In Paris, France, on July 25, 1917, the exotic dancer and suspected secret agent Mata Hari is sentenced to death by a French court for purportedly spying on Germany’s behalf…
On July 31, 1917, the Allies launch a renewed assault on German lines in the Flanders region of Belgium, in the much‑contested region near Ypres, during World War I. The…
On August 2, 1917, with British forces settling into new positions captured from the Germans in the much‑contested Ypres Salient on the Western Front of World War I, Germany faces…
On August 14, 1917, as World War I enters its fourth year, China abandons its neutrality and declares war on Germany. From its inception, the Great War was by no…
On August 28, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson is picketed by suffragists in front of the White House, who demand that he support an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee…
On September 1, 1917, American soldier Stull Holt writes a letter home recounting some of his battlefield experiences on the Western Front at Verdun, France. Born in New York City…
