June 17 is the 168th day of the year (169th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 197 days remain until the end of the year.
1901 – The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.
1910 – Aurel Vlaicu pilots an A. Vlaicu nr. 1 on its first flight.
1922 – Portuguese naval aviators Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral complete the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic.
1929 – The town of Murchison, New Zealand is rocked by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killing 17. At the time it was New Zealand's worst natural disaster.
1930 – U.S. president Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law.
1932 – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.
1933 – Union Station massacre: In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.
1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is executed in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.
1940 – World War II: RMS Lancastria is attacked and sunk by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 3,000 are killed in Britain's worst maritime disaster.[16] 1940 – World War II: The British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya from Italian forces.
1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.[17] 1948 – United Air Lines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
1952 – Guatemala passes Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land.[18] 1953 – Cold War: East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.
1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing 18 ironworkers and injuring others.[ 19] 1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.
1963 – Aleksander Kesküla, Estonian politician (born 1882) 1968 – José Nasazzi, Uruguayan footballer and manager (born 1901) 1974 – Refik Koraltan, Turkish lawyer and politician, 8th Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (born 1889)