📜 This Day in History
December 17
546Rome was sacked by the Ostrogoths led by Totila after a year-long siege.- 1790The Aztec sun stone, now a modern symbol of Mexican culture, was excavated in the Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City.
- 1939World War II: After sustaining moderate damage in the Battle of the River Plate two days earlier, the German cruiser Graf Spee was scuttled by its commander, Hans Langsdorff, to avoid its internment by Uruguay.
- 1948The Finnish Security Police was established to remove communist leadership from its predecessor, the State Police.
- 1983The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a car bomb outside Harrods in London, killing six people and injuring about 90 others.
- 2016The first victims of a mass methanol poisoning which eventually killed over 70 inhabitants of Irkutsk, Russia, began arriving at hospitals.
