On March 17, 461 A.D., Saint Patrick, Christian missionary, bishop and apostle of Ireland, dies at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland. Today he is honored with the annual holiday of St. Patrick's Day.

On March 17, 1776, British forces are forced to evacuate Boston following General George Washington’s successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights, which overlooks the city from the south.

Future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt weds his fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, in New York on March 17, 1905.

On March 17, 1973, Associated Press photographer Slava “Sal” Veder captures a heartwarming scene on the tarmac of California's Travis Air Force Base as a recently freed American prisoner of war runs toward his family. The jubilation of the moment is encapsulated in the central image of his teenaged daughter, whose wide smile and outstretched arms express her unbridled exuberance over her father's return from Vietnam. The photo depicting Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and his family, called “Burst of Joy,” goes on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1974.

On March 17, 1992, white South Africans vote overwhelmingly in a referendum to end minority rule, by a margin of 68.7 percent to 31.2 percent. Thus ends the turbulent period called apartheid, a racial segregation policy that separated the minority white population by designating areas and activities prohibited to Black people.

On March 17, 2011, 26-year-old Raymond Clark III, a former animal research assistant at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, pleads guilty to the murder and attempted sexual assault of 24-year-old Yale graduate student Annie Le. On September 13, 2009, Le’s partially decomposed body was found stuffed behind a wall in the university research building where she was last seen five days earlier.