Across the globe, 1917 brought upheaval. Russians overthrew Czar Nicholas II, then staged a second revolution, putting Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks in power and sparking a civil war. The U.S. and China both declared war on Germany, entering World War I in its fourth year. Puerto Ricans gained U.S. citizenship. And as America’s first-ever female congresswoman took office, the push for women’s suffrage intensified, with increased picketing and the arrest of many activists, followed by jailhouse hunger strikes, force feedings and mistreatment.
Jan
28
On the morning of January 28, 1917, a Mexican maid named Carmelita Torres refuses to put up with the indignity she has been made to suffer every morning since she started working across the border in the United States. Torres’ objection to the noxious chemical delousing visited upon Mexicans upon crossing the Northern border sparked what became known as the Bath Riots, an oft-overlooked moment in Chicano history.
Jan
31
Feb
01
On February 1, 1917, the lethal threat of the German U-boat submarine raises its head again, as Germany returns to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare it had previously suspended in response to pressure from the United States and other neutral countries.
Feb
05
Feb
05
After seven years of revolution and civil upheaval, Mexican President Venustiano Carranza proclaims the modern Mexican constitution, which promises the restoration of lands to native peoples, the separation of church and state, and dramatic economic and educational reforms. The progressive political document, approved by an elected constitutional convention, combined revolutionary demands for land reform with advanced social theory.
The Mexican flag flies over the Zocalo, the main square in Mexico City. The Metropolitan Cathedral faces the square, also referred to as Constitution Square.
John Coletti/Getty Images
Feb
05
With more than a two-thirds majority, Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passes the Immigration Act of 1917. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or agreements with the United States, such as the Philippines.
Feb
07
Just three days after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s speech of February 3, 1917—in which he broke diplomatic relations with Germany and warned that war would follow if American interests at sea were again assaulted—a German submarine torpedoes and sinks the Scottish Anchor Line passenger steamer SS California off the Irish coast.
Feb
12
The Austrian submarine U-35 bombs and sinks the American schooner Lyman M. Law in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Cagliari, Sardinia. The Lyman M. Law, captained by S.W. McDonough, had embarked on its final journey from Stockton, Maine, with a crew of 10 on January 6, 1917, carrying a cargo of 60,000 bundles of lemon-box staves.
Feb
22
Feb
24
During World War I, British authorities give Walter H. Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a copy of the “Zimmermann Telegram,” a coded message from Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign secretary, to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in late January, Zimmermann stated that in the event of war with the United States, Mexico should be asked to enter the conflict as a German ally. In return, Germany promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Feb
26
In a crucial step toward U.S. entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson learns of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between the U.S. and Germany.
Mar
01
On March 1, 1917, the text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram—a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany—is published on the front pages of newspapers across America.
Mar
02
Mar
05
Prime Minister Hjalmar Hammarskjöld of Sweden, father of the famous future United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, resigns on this day in 1917 after his policy of strict neutrality in World War I—including continued trading with Germany, in violation of the Allied blockade—leads to widespread hunger and political instability in Sweden.
Mar
08
In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) begins on March 8, 1917 when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd. One week later, centuries of czarist rule in Russia ended with the abdication of Nicholas II, and Russia took a dramatic step closer toward communist revolution.
23/02/1917: On this day in 1917, the February Revolution in Russia begins Bolshevik demonstration in the streets of Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) during the days when the Kornilov uprising threatened the Provisional Government and Kerensky, its leader, was away on the Galician Front visiting the troops. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
PA Images via Getty Images
Mar
10
Less than two weeks after their victorious recapture of the strategically placed city of Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris River in Mesopotamia, British troops under the regional command of Sir Frederick Stanley Maude bear down on Baghdad, causing their Turkish opponents to begin a full-scale evacuation of the city on the evening of March 10, 1917.
Mar
15
Apr
02
Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, takes her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana.
Seated portrait of American politician and feminist Jeannette Rankin (1880 - 1973) who served as Congresswoman for the state of Montana, February 1917. (Photo by Library of Congress/Interim Archives/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Apr
02
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I. In his address to Congress that day, Wilson lamented it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war. Four days later, Congress obliged and declared war on Germany.
Apr
06
April 6, 1917: Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50. As a result, America formally enters World War I.
WASHINGTON D.C. – APRIL 2: President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I, in his address to Congress in Washington D.C. on April 2, 1917.
The Stanley Weston Archive/Getty Images
Apr
12
Apr
16
Apr
17
Apr
25
Apr
30
On April 30, 1917, the so-called Battle of the Boot marks the end of the British army’s Samarrah Offensive, launched the previous month by Anglo-Indian forces under the regional commander in chief, Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, against the important Turkish railroad at Samarra, some 130 kilometers north of Baghdad, in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).
May
18
May
24
On May 24, 1917, driven by the spectacular success of the German U-boat submarines and their attacks on Allied and neutral ships at sea, the British Royal Navy introduces a newly created convoy system, whereby all merchant ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean would travel in groups under the protection of the British navy.
May
29
One of America’s best-loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. He was the first American president to be born and then serve in the 20th century.
Jun
14
On June 14, 1917, as the soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) travel to join the Allies on the battlefields of World War I in France, United States President Woodrow Wilson addresses the nation’s public on the annual celebration of Flag Day.
Jun
15
Jun
26
During World War I, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops land in France at the port of Saint-Nazaire. The landing site had been kept secret because of the menace of German submarines, but by the time the Americans had lined up to take their first salute on French soil, an enthusiastic crowd had gathered to welcome them. However, the “Doughboys,” as the British referred to the green American troops, were untrained, ill-equipped, and far from ready for the difficulties of fighting along the Western Front.
Jun
29
On June 29, 1917, several weeks after King Constantine I abdicates his throne in Athens under pressure from the Allies, Greece announces that it is cutting all diplomatic ties to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey). This ends three years of neutrality in World War I and signals Greece's de facto entry into the conflict alongside the Allied nations of Britain, France, Russia and Italy.
Jul
07
On July 7, 1917, British Army Council Instruction Number 1069 formally establishes the British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), authorizing female volunteers to serve alongside their male counterparts in France during World War I.
Jul
17
On July 17, 1917, during the third year of World War I, Britain’s King George V orders the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and surnames, changing the surname of his own family, the decidedly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor.
Jul
25
Jul
31
On July 31, 1917, the Allies launch a renewed assault on German lines in the Flanders region of Belgium, in the much-contested region near Ypres, during World War I. The attack begins more than three months of brutal fighting, known as the Third Battle of Ypres.
Aug
02
On August 2, 1917, with British forces settling into new positions captured from the Germans in the much-contested Ypres Salient on the Western Front of World War I, Germany faces more trouble closer to home, as a mutiny breaks out aboard the German battleship Prinzregent Luitpold, anchored at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven.
Aug
14
Aug
28
Sep
01
Oct
03
On October 3, 1917, six months after the United States declared war on Germany and began its participation in the First World War, the U.S. Congress passes the War Revenue Act, increasing income taxes to unprecedented levels in order to raise more money for the war effort.
Oct
15
Dancer, courtesan and alleged spy Mata Hari is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris.
(Original Caption) Photo shows Mata Hari as she looked in the days of her glory, before the war. (Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)
Corbis via Getty Images
Oct
24
On October 24, 1917, the Battle of Caporetto (also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Karfreit) begins. A combined German and Austro-Hungarian force scored one of the most crushing victories of World War I, decimating the Italian line along the northern stretch of the Isonzo River.
Oct
26
Nov
02
On November 2, 1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour writes an important letter to Britain’s most illustrious Jewish citizen, Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, expressing the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The letter would eventually become known as the Balfour Declaration.
Nov
06
Nov
06
Led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin, leftist revolutionaries launch a nearly bloodless coup d’état against Russia’s ineffectual Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in the Russian capital of Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and within two days had formed a new government with Lenin as its head. Bolshevik Russia, later renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was the world’s first Marxist state.
Nov
15
Nov
20
At dawn on the morning of November 20, 1917, six infantry and two cavalry divisions of the British Expeditionary Force—with additional support from 14 squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps—join the British Tank Corps in a surprise attack on the German lines near Cambrai, France.
Dec
04
Well-known psychiatrist W.H. Rivers presents his report The Repression of War Experience, based on his work at the Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers, to the Royal School of Medicine, on this day in 1917. Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, was one of the most famous hospitals used to treat soldiers who suffered from psychological traumas as a result of their service on the battlefield.
Dec
06
At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with another vessel. More than 1,800 people died.
Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images
Dec
09
Dec
10
Dec
15
Dec
19
On December 19, 1917, Montreal teams win the first two NHL games played. In a 7-4 win over the Ottawa Senators, the Canadiens' Joe Malone scores five goals. In his team's 10-9 win over the Toronto Arenas, the Montreal Wanderers' Harry Hyland also scores five goals.
Getty Images
Dec
22
A week after the armistice was signed between Russia and Germany and nearly three weeks after a ceasefire was declared on the Eastern Front, representatives of the two countries begin peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, near the Polish border in what is now the city of Brest, in Belarus.
Dec
26
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