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Explore 17 December

Explore 17 December: the Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, Gran Colombia is born at Angostura, Bhutan crowns its first king and a street vendor’s protest starts the Tunisian revolution. Meet Humphry Davy, Willard Libby and Pope Francis, born on this date.

This day through time →9 verified events across 4 eras

⌛9Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙7Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉1Firsts &
Discoveries ♫1Culture
Stories ☉1Observances
The first flight at Kill Devil Hills, 10.35 a.m.: Orville at the controls, Wilbur running alongside.
The first flight at Kill Devil Hills, 10.35 a.m.: Orville at the controls, Wilbur running alongside.
Image creditJohn T. Daniels · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1903

The Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk

At 10.35 in the morning of 17 December 1903, on the sand at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright lay on the lower wing of the Wright Flyer and took off into a cold wind. He stayed in the air for twelve seconds and covered 120 feet: the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered machine heavier than air.

The brothers, bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, took turns and flew three more times that day, each flight longer than the last; Wilbur’s fourth went 852 feet in 59 seconds. John T. Daniels of the local lifesaving station pressed the shutter on the camera Orville had set up, taking one of the best-known photographs ever made.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress: First Flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers ↗
Agostino Codazzi's map of the Republic of Colombia, the state later called Gran Colombia.
Agostino Codazzi’s map of the Republic of Colombia, the state later called Gran Colombia.
Image creditAgostino Codazzi · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1819

The Republic of Colombia is proclaimed at Angostura

On 17 December 1819 the congress sitting at Angostura, a river town on the Orinoco, passed the Fundamental Law uniting Venezuela and New Granada into a single Republic of Colombia. Simón Bolívar, fresh from his victory at Boyacá in August, had urged the deputies to create one large state strong enough to finish the war with Spain, and was made its president.

Historians call it Gran Colombia to tell it apart from the modern country. At its height it took in what are now Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama. It did not survive its founder: Venezuela and Ecuador broke away in 1830, the year Bolívar died.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Gran Colombia ↗
Ugyen Wangchuck, first king of Bhutan, photographed by John Claude White.
Ugyen Wangchuck, first king of Bhutan, photographed by John Claude White.
Image creditJohn Claude White · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1907

Bhutan crowns its first king

On 17 December 1907 Ugyen Wangchuck, the governor of Tongsa, was crowned at Punakha as the first hereditary king, or Druk Gyalpo, of Bhutan. An assembly of monks, officials and representatives of the people chose him, ending years of rivalry between regional lords.

The Wangchuck dynasty has reigned ever since. Bhutan, never colonised, kept its independence between British India and Tibet; in 2008 the fourth king’s reforms turned it into a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Ugyen Wangchuk ↗
The cemetery near Sidi Bouzid where Mohamed Bouazizi is buried.
The cemetery near Sidi Bouzid where Mohamed Bouazizi is buried.
Image creditThijs Roes · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
2010

A protest in Sidi Bouzid starts the Tunisian revolution

On 17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old fruit seller in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, had his goods confiscated by municipal inspectors. When officials refused to hear his complaint he set himself on fire outside the local government offices. He died of his injuries on 4 January 2011.

Protests spread from Sidi Bouzid across the country. On 14 January President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in power since 1987, fled to Saudi Arabia. Within weeks demonstrations had reached Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, in the wave that became known as the Arab Spring.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Mohamed Bouazizi ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

Humphry Davy
Image creditThomas Phillips · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1778

Humphry Davy

Cornish chemist who isolated sodium and potassium and invented the miners’ safety lamp.

William Lyon Mackenzie King
Image creditYousuf Karsh · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1874

William Lyon Mackenzie King

Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, in office for more than twenty-one years between 1921 and 1948.

Willard Libby
Image creditWilly Pragher · CC BY 3.0 deResized and cropped for display.
Born 1908

Willard Libby

American chemist who developed radiocarbon dating and won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it.

Eugene Levy
Image creditDesmond Herzfelder · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1946

Eugene Levy

Canadian comic actor of SCTV and American Pie, and co-creator of the sitcom Schitt’s Creek.

Milla Jovovich
Image creditKevin Paul · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1975

Milla Jovovich

Actress and model born in Kyiv, star of The Fifth Element and the Resident Evil films.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

The Hahn-Meitner building in Berlin-Dahlem, named after Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.
The Hahn-Meitner building in Berlin-Dahlem, named after Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.
Image creditFridolin freudenfett (Peter Kuley) · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1938

Hahn and Strassmann find barium in uranium

On 17 December 1938, in a Berlin laboratory, the chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann bombarded uranium with neutrons and found barium among the products. Barium is a far lighter element, and neither of them could explain how it had got there.

Hahn wrote to his long-time colleague Lise Meitner, who had fled Nazi Germany that summer. Over Christmas she and her nephew Otto Frisch worked out that the uranium nucleus had split in two, releasing a great deal of energy; they called the process fission. Within a few years it had produced both nuclear power and the atomic bomb.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: American Physical Society: December 1938, discovery of nuclear fission ↗
♫
MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, in 2024.
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, in 2024.
Image creditPhilipRomanoPhoto · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
1989

The Simpsons arrives as a half-hour show

The Simpsons began as short cartoons in The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. On 17 December 1989 the Fox network broadcast its first half-hour episode, a Christmas special called ‘Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire’, in which Homer, denied his bonus, takes a second job as a shopping-centre Santa.

Regular weekly episodes began in January 1990. The show went on to become the longest-running American scripted primetime series, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History holds a script of that first episode.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: National Museum of American History: script for the first episode of The Simpsons ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Simón Bolívar
Image creditLuis Enrique Toro Moreno (1897-1933) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1830

Simón Bolívar

Venezuelan soldier and statesman who led the wars of independence across northern South America; he died of tuberculosis near Santa Marta.

Leopold II of Belgium
Image creditAlexander Bassano · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1909

Leopold II of Belgium

King of the Belgians whose private Congo Free State was run by forced labour and terror until international outrage forced him to give it up in 1908.

Victor Hess
Image creditUnknown · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1964

Victor Hess

Austrian-American physicist who discovered cosmic rays on balloon flights in 1912 and shared the 1936 Nobel Prize for it.

Marguerite Yourcenar
Image creditBernhard De Grendel · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Died 1987

Marguerite Yourcenar

French novelist of Memoirs of Hadrian and the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

Punakha Dzong, where Ugyen Wangchuck was crowned in 1907.
Punakha Dzong, where Ugyen Wangchuck was crowned in 1907.
Image creditWanhoff · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

National Day of Bhutan

Bhutan keeps 17 December as its National Day, the anniversary of the coronation of Ugyen Wangchuck as the first king in 1907. The day is a public holiday, marked with a public address by the king and celebrations across the country’s districts.

Source: Royal Bhutanese Embassy, New Delhi: history of Bhutan ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 17 December chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 9 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading