On August 17
No pivotal events are recorded on exactly August 17 in the Human Saga — here is the surrounding week in history.
This week in history (Aug 14 – Aug 20)
At midnight on 14–15 August 1947 the British Raj was dissolved and replaced by two independent dominions, Pakistan (14 August) and India (15 August), under the Indian Independence Act passed by the UK Parliament on 18 July 1947.
On 20 August 1897, while working in Secunderabad in British India, the army surgeon Ronald Ross dissected an Anopheles mosquito that had fed days earlier on a malaria patient and found the malarial parasite developing within cells of the…
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the denial of the right to vote on the basis of sex.
On 19 August 1953 Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, was overthrown in a coup organised by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6, under the codename Operation Boot) and the American Central…
On 15 August 1971 President Richard Nixon announced a 'New Economic Policy' that suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold, alongside a 90-day wage and price freeze and a temporary import surcharge.
Over the weekend of 15 to 18 August 1969, an estimated 400,000 people gathered at Max Yasgur's dairy farm near Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, billed as an Aquarian Exposition of three days of peace and music.