#TodayInHistory – March 17

March 17 – Some Important Events on this day

45 BC 👉🏼 In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda

432 👉🏼 Saint Patrick, aged about 16 is captured by Irish pirates from his home in Great Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland. And this is the traditional date.
✔️Read the article about St. Patrick Day.

1337 👉🏼 Edward the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy made in England
1521 👉🏼 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines 🇵🇭
1762 👉🏼 1st St Patrick’s Day parade in NYC

1829 👉🏼 Final performance by famous clown Joseph Grimaldi at a benefit performance at Sadler’s Wells, London. The most famous clown of them all and the most popular English entertainer of the Regency era (1811-1820), in the early 1800s, he expanded the role of Clown in the harlequinade that formed part of British pantomimes, notably at the Drury Lane, Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden theatres. Grimaldi became so dominant on the London comic stage that the harlequinade role of Clown became known as “Joey”, and both the nickname and Grimaldi’s whiteface are used by clowns still today. He died in May 31, 1837 at 58 and the coroner recorded that he “died by the visitation of God”.

1845 👉🏼 Rubber band patented by Stephen Perry of London
1860 👉🏼 Six years after the forcible ending of Japan’s isolationist policy by US Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry, the Japanese Embassy arrives in San Francisco to sign a Treaty of Friendship
1861 👉🏼 Italy is unified into a single kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II following the campaigns led by Giuseppe Garibaldi 🇮🇹
1898 👉🏼 John Philip Holland, father of the Modern Submarine, achieves successful test run for the first modern submarine off Staten Island, submerging for 1 hour 40 minutes. Developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy.
1901 👉🏼 At a show in Paris 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings cause a sensation, 11 years after his death 🎨
1905 👉🏼 Albert Einstein finishes his scientific paper detailing his Quantum Theory of Light, one of the foundations of modern physics

1938 👉🏼 The Italian Air Force, in support of Francisco Franco, bombs Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.
By 1938, Spain’s vicious civil war had begun to reach its close, with the Nationalist forces making important gains across Spain. By the middle of the year Barcelona was cut off from Madrid and it was clear the Republicans could not win the war. Thus, foreign involvement in the war was important from the beginning. Just as Adolf Hitler had thrown his Condor Legion into action to help Francisco Franco, his fascist Italian allies under Benito Mussolini had done the same. By 1939 the war was over and Franco would rule Spain for another thirty years.

1939 👉🏼 Battle of Nanchang between the Kuomintang and the Japanese breaks out (Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945)
1942 👉🏼 Bełżec Concentration Camp opens with the transport of 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews
1961 👉🏼 Jaguar head William Lyons debuts the first E-Type model at the Geneva International Motor Show. 🚘