Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 17

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 * 986 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: The Bulgarians defeated Byzantine forces at the Battle of the Gates of Trajan near present-day Ihtiman, with Emperor Basil II barely escaping.
 * 1424 – Hundred Years' War: Allied English and Burgundian forces gained a strategically important victory at the bloody Battle of Verneuil in Normandy, France.
 * 1560 – The Scottish Reformation Parliament approved a Protestant confession of faith, initiating the Scottish Reformation and disestablishing Catholicism as the national religion.
 * 1907 – Pike Place Market, one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the U.S. and a popular tourist attraction, opened in Seattle, Washington.
 * 1914 – World War I: Ignoring orders to retreat, Hermann von François led a successful counterattack defending East Prussia at the Battle of Stallupönen and scored the first German victory in the Eastern Front.
 * 1915 – American Jew Leo Frank was lynched by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia, for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl.
 * 1916 – World War I: Romania signed a secret treaty with the Entente Powers, agreeing to enter the war in return for promised territory in Austria-Hungary.
 * 1943 – Second World War: The Royal Air Force began a strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany's V-weapon programme by attacking the Peenemünde Army Research Center.
 * 1945 – The independence of Indonesia was proclaimed by Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, igniting a revolution against the Dutch Empire.
 * 1950 – Korean War: Forty-two American prisoners of war were massacred by the Korean People's Army on a hill above Waegwan, South Korea.
 * 1969 – Hurricane Camille struck the Mississippi coast of the United States, killing 259 people and causing $1.42 billion in damage..
 * 2008 – Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympics, the most golds by any person at a single games.
 * 2009 – A hydroelectric turbine at the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam in Russia catastrophically failed, flooding the turbine hall, killing 75 people and causing widespread power outages.
 * Born/died: | Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen |d|1676| Matthew Boulton |d|1809| Gene Stratton-Porter |b|1863| Leslie Groves |b|1896| Maureen O'Hara |b|1920| Margaret Hamilton |b|1936| Billy Fiske |d|1940| Robert De Niro |b|1943|  Sean Penn |b|1960| Dawn Mabalon |b|1972| Thierry Henry |b|1977| Tarja Turunen |b|1977|