📜 This Day in History
May 17
1395An outnumbered Wallachian army repulsed invading Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rovine.- 1865The International Telecommunication Union, which standardizes and regulates international radio and telecommunications, was founded as the International Telegraph Union in Paris.
- 1900Second Boer War: The Siege of Mafeking in South Africa was lifted after 217 days, a decisive victory for the British against the Boers.
- 1954The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing racial segregation in public schools because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and therefore unconstitutional.
- 1995Six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama selected by the 14th Dalai Lama, was kidnapped by the Chinese government, who advocated a proxy.
- 2014A military plane crash killed 17 people and left one survivor in northern Laos.
