Year 2017
Events
January
January 1 – 2017 Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa
Claus opens fire at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 39
people and injuring 79 others.
January 16 – Turkish Airlines Flight 6491, a cargo flight en route from
Hong Kong to Istanbul via Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, crashes in a residential
area while attempting to land at Manas International Airport, Bishkek,
killing all four crew members on board and 35 people on the ground.
January 20 – Donald Trump, a Republican New York City businessman, is
sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Trump is the first
person to be elected President of the United States who was neither a
political office holder nor a military general.
January 21 – Millions of people worldwide join the Women's March in
response to the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United
States. 420 marches were reported in the U.S. and 168 in other
countries, becoming the largest single-day protest in American history
and the largest worldwide protest in recent history.
January 30 – Morocco rejoins the African Union.
February
"February 2017" redirects here. For the Charli XCX song, see Charli
(album).
February 11 – North Korea prompts international condemnation by test
firing a ballistic missile across the Sea of Japan.
February 13 – Assassination of Kim Jong-nam: Kim Jong-nam, the eldest
son of deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the half-brother of
current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is killed after being attacked
by two women with VX nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur International Airport
in Malaysia.
February 26 – An annular solar eclipse was visible from Pacific, Chile,
Argentina, Atlantic, Africa. It was the 29th eclipse of the 140th saros
cycle (descending node), which started with a partial solar eclipse
visible in the Southern Hemisphere on April 16, 1512 and will conclude
with another partial solar eclipse visible in the Northern Hemisphere on
June 1, 2774.
March
March 10 – The UN warns that the world is facing the largest
humanitarian crisis since World War II, with up to 20 million people at
risk of starvation and famine in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and
Nigeria.
March 14 – March 2017 North American blizzard, a major late-season
blizzard, affects the Northeastern United States, New England and
Canada, dumping up to three feet of snow in the hardest hit areas.
March 22 – An Islamic terror attack outside the Palace of Westminster in
London, England, kills five people and injures more than fifty others.
March 29 – The United Kingdom triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty,
starting the Brexit negotiations, the talks for the United Kingdom to
leave the European Union.
March 30 – SpaceX conducts the world's first reflight of an orbital
class rocket.
April
April 6 – In response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a
rebel-held town, the U.S. military launches 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles
at an air base in Syria. Russia describes the strikes as an
"aggression", adding they significantly damage U.S.–Russia ties.
April 13 – In the 2017 Nangarhar airstrike the U.S. drops the GBU-43/B
MOAB, the world's largest non-nuclear weapon, at an ISIL base in the
Nangarhar Province of eastern Afghanistan.
May
May 9 – U.S. President Donald Trump fires FBI Director James Comey,
leading to increased calls for the appointment of a special counsel.
May 12 – WannaCry ransomware attack: Computers around the world are hit
by a large-scale ransomware cyberattack, which goes on to affect at
least 150 countries.
May 17 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed Special Counsel
for the United States Department of Justice, taking over the
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States
Presidential Election.
May 22 – An Islamic terrorist bombing attack at an Ariana Grande concert
in Manchester, England, kills 22 people and injures more than 500
others.
June
June 1 – Amidst widespread criticism, the U.S. government announces its
decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in due time.
June 3 – An Islamist terror attack on London Bridge kills 8 people and
injures 48 others.
June 5
Montenegro joins NATO as the 29th member.
The 2017–18 Qatar diplomatic crisis starts, as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries block Qatari access to
their seas and air.
June 7 – Two terrorist attacks are simultaneously carried out by five
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists against the
Iranian Parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, both
in Tehran, leaving 17 civilians dead and 43 more wounded. It is the
first ISIL attack in Iran.
June 8 – In the midst of Brexit, a snap general election is held in the
UK, three years before the next one was due, resulting in a hung
parliament, with the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Theresa
May, losing their majority in Parliament. The Labour Party, led by
Jeremy Corbyn, makes gains for the first time since 1997. Days later,
the Conservative Party, now lacking a majority, enters a
confidence-and-supply deal with the Northern Irish DUP.
June 10 – The 2017 World Expo is opened in Astana, Kazakhstan.
June 12 – American student Otto Warmbier returns home in a coma after
spending 17 months in a North Korean prison. He dies on June 19.
June 14 – A fire at Grenfell Tower in London, England, kills 72 people
and injures more than 70 others.
June 18 – Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) fire six
surface-to-surface mid-range ballistic missiles from domestic bases
targeting ISIL forces in the Syrian Deir ez-Zor Governorate in response
to the terrorist attacks in Tehran earlier that month.
June 21 – The Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq, is destroyed by
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
June 25 – The World Health Organization estimates that Yemen has over
200,000 cases of cholera.
June 27 – 2017 cyberattacks on Ukraine: A series of cyberattacks using
the Petya malware begins, affecting organizations in Ukraine.
July
July 4 – Russia and China urge North Korea to halt its missile and
nuclear programs after it successfully tested its first intercontinental
ballistic missile.
July 7 – The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is voted for
by 122 states.
July 10 – Iraqi Civil War: Mosul is declared fully liberated from the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
August
August 5
The UN Security Council unanimously approves fresh sanctions on North
Korean trade and investment.
Mauritania holds a constitutional referendum for approval of proposed
amendments to the constitution.
August 12 – The Unite the Right rally is held in Charlottesville,
Virginia, United States, by a variety of white nationalist and other
far-right groups; Heather Heyer, a counter-protestor, is killed after
being hit by a car.
August 17 – The first observation of a collision of two neutron stars
(GW170817) is hailed as a breakthrough in multi-messenger astronomy when
both gravitational and electromagnetic waves from the event are
detected. Data from the event provided confirmatory evidence for the
r-process theory of the origin of heavy elements like gold.
August 18 – The first terrorist attack ever sentenced as a crime in
Finland kills two people and injures eight others. Islamic terrorist
Abderrahman Bouanane, a Moroccan man carried out the ISIS-inspired
attack in southwest Finland.
August 21 – A total solar eclipse (nicknamed "The Great American
Eclipse") is visible within a band across the entire contiguous United
States of America, passing from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts.
August 25–ongoing – A military operation targeting Rohingya Muslims in
Myanmar "seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing", according to the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
August 25–30 – Hurricane Harvey strikes the United States as a Category
4 hurricane, causing catastrophic damage to the Houston metropolitan
area, mostly due to record-breaking floods. At least 108 deaths are
recorded, and total damage reaches $125 billion (2017 USD), making
Harvey the costliest natural disaster in United States history, tied
with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
September
September 1 – Russian President Vladimir Putin expels 755 diplomats in
response to United States sanctions.
September 3 – North Korea conducts its sixth and most powerful nuclear
test.
September 6–10 – The Caribbean and United States are struck by Hurricane
Irma, a Category 5 hurricane that is the strongest hurricane ever
recorded in the Atlantic basin outside the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
The storm causes at least 146 deaths and $64.2 billion (2017 USD) in
damage.
September 13 – The International Olympic Committee awards Paris and Los
Angeles the right to host the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics,
respectively.
September 15 – Cassini–Huygens ends its 13-year mission by plunging into
Saturn, becoming the first spacecraft to enter the planet's atmosphere.
September 19 – Eleven days after another powerful earthquake, and on the
32nd anniversary of the deadly 1985 Mexico City earthquake, a 7.1 Mw
earthquake strikes central Mexico, killing more than 350, leaving up to
6,000 injured and thousands more homeless.
September 19–20 – Just two weeks after Hurricane Irma struck the
Caribbean, Hurricane Maria strikes similar areas, making landfall on
Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane, and Puerto Rico as a Category 4
hurricane. Maria caused at least 3,000 deaths and damages estimated in
excess of $91.6 billion (2017 USD).
September 25 – Iraqi Kurdistan votes in a referendum to become an
independent state, in defiance of Iraq; by October 15, the crisis
escalates into a short-lived armed conflict over disputed territories.
October
October 1 – Fifty-eight people are killed and 851 injured when Stephen
Paddock opens fire on a crowd in Las Vegas, surpassing the 2016 Orlando
nightclub shooting as the deadliest mass shooting perpetrated by a lone
gunman in U.S. history.
October 12 – The United States announces its decision to withdraw from
UNESCO, and is immediately followed by Israel.
October 14 – A massive blast caused by a truck bombing in Mogadishu,
Somalia kills at least 512 people and injures 316 others.
October 17 – Syrian Civil War: Raqqa is declared fully liberated from
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
October 25 – At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of
China, Xi Jinping assumes his second term as General Secretary (China's
paramount leader), and the political theory Xi Jinping Thought is
written into the party's constitution.
October 27 – Based on the results of a previously held referendum,
Catalonia declares independence from Spain, but the Catalan Republic is
not recognised by the Spanish government or any other sovereign nation.
October 31 – 2017 New York City truck attack: A rental truck plows into
cyclists and runners in Lower Manhattan, New York City, killing eight
people and injuring eleven others in an Islamic terror attack.
November
November 2 – A new species of orangutan is identified in Indonesia,
becoming the third known species of orangutan as well as the first great
ape to be described for almost a century.
November 3 – Syrian Civil War: both Deir ez-Zor in Syria and Al-Qa'im in
Iraq are declared liberated from ISIL on the same day.
November 5
The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung publishes 13.4 million
documents leaked from the offshore law firm Appleby, along with business
registries in 19 tax jurisdictions that reveal offshore financial
activities on behalf of politicians, celebrities, corporate giants and
business leaders. The newspaper shared the documents with the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and asked it to
lead the investigation.
Sutherland Springs church shooting: A gunman opens fire in a Baptist
church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, United States, killing 26 people
and injures 20 more. It was the deadliest shooting in an American place
of worship in modern history, surpassing the Charleston church shooting
of 2015 and the Waddell Buddhist temple shooting of 1991.
November 12 – A magnitude 7.3 earthquake strikes the border region
between Iraq and Iran leaving at least 530 dead and over 70,000
homeless.
November 15
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is placed under house arrest, as the
military take control of the country. He resigns six days later, after
37 years of rule.
A Leonardo da Vinci painting, Salvator Mundi, sells for US$450 million
at Christie's in New York, a new record price for any work of art.
The Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan suddenly vanished with 44 crew
members on board whilst on a routine patrol in the South Atlantic. It
would be found one year later wrecked 907 metres (2,976 ft) below the
Atlantic Ocean.
November 20 – Nature publishes an article recognising the high-velocity
asteroid ʻOumuamua as originating from outside the Solar System, i.e.
the first known interstellar object.
November 22 – The International Court of Justice finds Ratko Mladić
guilty of genocide committed in Srebrenica during the 1990s Bosnian War,
the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. He is sentenced to life
in prison.
November 24 – A mosque attack in Sinai, Egypt kills 305 worshippers and
leaves hundreds more wounded.
December
December 5 – Russia is banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics in
Pyeongchang by the International Olympic Committee, following an
investigation into state-sponsored doping.
December 6 – The United States officially recognizes Jerusalem as
Israel's capital.
December 9 – The Iraqi military announces that it has "fully liberated"
all of Iraq's territory from "ISIS terrorist gangs" and retaken full
control of the Iraqi-Syrian border.
December 14 – The Walt Disney Company announces that it will acquire
most of 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox film studio,
for $66 billion.
December 22 – The UN Security Council votes 15–0 in favor of additional
sanctions on North Korea, including measures to slash the country's
petroleum imports by up to 90%.
December 24 – Guatemala follows in the footsteps of the United States by
announcing that they will also move their Israeli embassy to Jerusalem,
followed by Honduras and Panama two days later.
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