March 17 in History
1852 — Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis discovers the asteroid Psyche from the north dome of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples. He names it after the Greek goddess of the soul. The largest and most massive M-type asteroid, it is one of the dozen most massive asteroids.
1876 — British high jump champion Marshall Jones Brooks clears 1.83m at Oxford to set the new unofficial world record (prior to 1912, the high jump world record was not ratified by the IAAF); the first leap over 6ft.
1891 — SS Utopia collides accidentally with the moored battleship HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar and sinks, killing 562 of the 880 passengers and crew on board.
1942 — Holocaust: German SS and police authorities begin the deportations of Jews from the ghettos in Lublin and Lvov to the Belzec death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, the first major deportations within the framework of Operation Reinhard. The SS Special Detachment stationed at Belzec kills at least 434,508 Jews in gas chambers between March 17 and December 31 1942, as well as an undetermined number of Roma. It is the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by Auschwitz and Treblinka.
1948 — Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), formed on April 4 1949.
1957 — Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay, 49, and 24 others are killed in a plane crash on the slopes of Mount Manunggal on the island of Cebu.
1959 — Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet for India.
1959 — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, announce that they have discovered element 98, which they name californium. It is the sixth transuranium element (chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92, the number of uranium) to be discovered.
1969 — Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel and the first female head of government in the Middle East.
1973 — Legislation for the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry is passed by parliament (Majlis) to seize control of the industry which had been run by private companies, largely controlled by foreign interests, since oil was discovered in the country on May 26 1908.