On May 17
No pivotal events are recorded on exactly May 17 in the Human Saga — here is the surrounding week in history.
This week in history (May 14 – May 20)
On 20 May 1498 the Portuguese commander Vasco da Gama anchored near Calicut (Kozhikode) on India's Malabar Coast, becoming the first European to reach India by sea.
On 14 May 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner performed a landmark experiment in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, that established the practice of vaccination.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret wartime convention concluded on 16 May 1916 between Britain and France, with the assent of Imperial Russia, to define their respective spheres of influence and control in the Arab lands of the Ottoman…
On 14 May 1948, as the British Mandate over Palestine expired, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv.
On 14 May 1607 roughly a hundred settlers sent by the Virginia Company of London established a fort on Jamestown Island in the Chesapeake Bay, founding the first permanent English settlement in North America.
On 14 May 1955 the Soviet Union and seven Eastern European communist states signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in Warsaw, creating the Warsaw Pact.
The Frankfurt National Assembly, which first met in the Paulskirche on 18 May 1848, was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany and the boldest attempt of the 1848 revolutions to create a unified, constitutional German…