Today in History in 1912 Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen. The return journey will lead to the deaths of all members of Scott's expedition, including Scott himself.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 348 days remaining until the end of the year (349 in leap years).

EVENTS

395 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I dies in Milan. The Roman Empire is re–divided into West and East.

1287 – King Alfonso III of Aragon invades the island of Menorca.

1377 – Pope Gregory XI moves the Pope's residence (place where he lives) back to Rome from Avignon.

1524 – Giovanni da Verrazzano sets sail westward from Madeira to find a sea route to the Pacific Ocean.

1562 – France accepted the Huguenots under the Edict of St. Germain.

1566 – On his 62nd birthday, Pope Pius V officially becomes Pope.

1595 – Henry IV of France invades Spain.

1648 – England's Long Parliament agrees with the Vote of No Address, stopping dealing with King Charles I which then started the second part of the English Civil War.

1746 – Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", makes a Hanoverian army lose at Falkirk in his failing campaign to get back the throne for the Jacobite dynasty.

1773 – Captain James Cook becomes the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle.

1781 – Continental troops of Brigadier General Daniel Morgan makes British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton lose at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina.

1799 – Maltese patriot Dun Mikiel Xerri, along with some other patriots, is executed.

1811 – Mexican War of Independence: Battle of Calderon Bridge – A heavily outnumbered Spanish force of 6,000 troops defeats 100,000 Mexican revolutionaries.

1813 – Humphrey Davy creates the electric arc.

1819 – Simón Bolívar creates the Republic of Colombia.

1852 – United Kingdom accepts the freedom of the Boer places of the Transvaal.

1873 – First Battle of the Stronghold in the United States Modoc War.

1885 – A British force makes a large Dervish army lose at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan.

1893 – American sugar planters led by the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety remove the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

1899 – The United States gets Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.

1904 – Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard is performed for the first time, at Moscow Art Theatre.

1912 – Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen. The return journey will lead to the deaths of all members of Scott's expedition, including Scott himself.

1913 – Raymond Poincaré becomes President of France.

1916 – The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) starts.

1917 – The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.

1918 – Finnish Civil War: The first serious battles take place between the Red Guards and White Guards.

1929 – Inayatullah Khan, King of Afghanistan, abdicates (resigns) the throne after only three days.

1929 – Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character made by Elzie Crisler Segar, first seen in a newspaper comic strip.

1944 – World War II: Allied forces launch the first of four assaults on Monte Cassino, Italy, in an effort to reach Rome. It would take four months and would cost 105,000 Allied lives.

1945 – Soviet forces get the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw.

1945 – The Nazis begin the process of people leaving the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces surround it.

1945 – Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappears in Hungary while the Soviets were in charge of him.

1946 – The United Nations Security Council has its first meeting.

1949 – The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, is seen.

1950 – The Great Brinks Robbery – 11 people steal more than $2 million from an secure car in Boston, Massachusetts.

1955 – Nuclear submarine Nautilus starts its first mission.

1961 – Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered, with the governments of both Belgium and the United States suspected of being involved.

1966 – Simon and Garfunkel release their second album, Sounds of Silence, on Columbia Records.

1966 – A B-52 bomber slams into a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain, dropping three 70–kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.

1966 – Carl Brashear, the first African American United States Navy diver, gets hurt in a way so his leg has to be chopped off.

1972 – Bangladesh receives its current Flag.

1973 – Ferdinand Marcos is declared "President for Life" of the Philippines.

1975 – Bob Dylan puts out Blood on the Tracks, often said to be one of his best albums.

1977 – Gary Gilmore is put to death by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten–year delay on being put to death as punishment in the United States.

1982 – " Cold Sunday" in the United States sees temperatures fall to their lowest levels in over 100 years in many cities.

1985 – British Telecom says that Britain's famous red telephone boxes will no longer exist.

1989 – Cleveland school massacre in Stockton, California: Patrick Purdy kills 5 elementary school children with an assault rifle, as well as one teacher, before killing himself.

1991 – Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq shoots 8 Scud bombs into Israel in a failed attempt to provoke Israel to fight back.

1991 – Harald V becomes King of Norway because his father, Olav V, died.

1992 – Punk rock band Green Day sends out their second full–length album, Kerplunk.

1994 – A magnitude 6.7 earthquake happens in Northridge, California.

1995 – A magnitude 7.3 earthquake called the "Great Hanshin earthquake" happens near Kobe, Japan, causing property to be damaged and killing 6,433 people.

1996 – The Czech Republic asks the European Union if they can be a member.

1998 – Paula Jones says she was sexually harassed by President Bill Clinton.

2002 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making about 400,000 people homeless.

2007 – The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes before midnight in response to North Korea's nuclear testing.

2008 – British Airways Flight 38 crash–lands at London Heathrow Airport. All people on board survive.

2010 – Religious riots between Muslims and Christians erupt in Jos, Nigeria, killing more than 200 people.

2018 – A car bomb attack in Bogota, Colombia, kills 21 people.