January 17 in History

January 17 is the 17th day of the year. There are 348 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1773 – Captain James Cook and his crew become the first Europeans to sail below the Antarctic Circle.
• 1899 – The United States took possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.
• 1911 – George Joseph Stigler, American economist and Nobel Prize  laureate, was born. He died in 1991.
• 1917 – The US paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
• 1929 – “Popeye the Sailor Man,” created by Elzie Segar, first appeared in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
• 1933 – Shari Lewis, American ventriloquist & “Mom” of Lambchop, was born. She died in 1998.
• 1945 – Nazis began the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces approached.
• 1945 – Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was taken into Soviet custody while in Hungary; he was never publicly seen again.
• 1949 – The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, aired.
• 1950 – Eleven thieves stole $2+ million from a Brinks Company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1964 – Michelle Obama, attorney & US First Lady, was born.
• 1983 – The tallest department store in the world, Hudson’s, in downtown Detroit closed due to high cost of operating.
• 1995 - A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit near Kobe, Japan, causing extensive property damage and killing 6,434 people.
• 2001 – President Bill Clinton posthumously raised Meriwether Lewis’ rank from Lieutenant to Captain.
• 2007 – The Doomsday Clock was set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea nuclear testing.