August 17^th in history

Encyclopædia Britannica presents people and events from this day in history:

Sir V.S. Naipaul: Biography of the Day

Sir V.S. Naipaul

Trinidadian writer Sir V.S. Naipaul, who was born this day in 1932, became known for his pessimistic novels set in Third World countries—such as A Bend in the River (1979)—and won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.

 

Indonesia's declaration of independence: 17 August 1945 - This Day in History

On this day in 1945, Sukarno declared Indonesia's independence from The Netherlands, and, after the Dutch transferred sovereignty four years later, he served as the country's first president (1949–67).

More Events on this day:

1978: Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in Double Eagle II.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a rock festival near Bethel, New York, that attracted 450,000 fans, ended.

1896: George Washington Carmack unearthed gold in Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory, Canada, setting off a gold rush into the Klondike valley.

1590: John White returned to Roanoke Island, Virginia, from England and found no trace of the colony (now called the Lost Colony) that he had left there three years earlier.

 

Marcus Garvey: Biography of the Day

Marcus Garvey

"My garb is Scotch, my name is Irish, my blood is African, and my training is half American and half English, and I think that with that tradition I can take care of myself."

Marcus Garvey

Born in Jamaica this day in 1887, Marcus Garvey was a charismatic black leader who organized the first important American black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City's Harlem. In August 1914 he and a group of friends in Jamaica founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a black-governed nation. Failing to attract a following in Jamaica, Garvey went to the United States (1916) and soon established branches of the UNIA in Harlem and the other principal ghettos of the North.

 

Indonesia's declaration of independence from The Netherlands: 17 August 1945 - This Day in History

Located off the coast of the Southeast Asian mainland in the Indian and Pacific oceans, the country of Indonesia (formerly the Dutch East Indies), an archipelago, fell under Dutch colonial rule in 1602, with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company. Following this, the country's capital city of Jakarta was captured and razed by the Dutch, under the leadership of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, in 1619. The colonial era ended with the entry of Japan into World War II, when Indonesia was occupied by Japanese forces. After the war, the capital was briefly occupied by the Allies and then was returned to the Dutch. On this day Indonesia declared its independence from The Netherlands.

More Events on this day:

1978: Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in Double Eagle II.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a rock festival attracting 450,000 fans near Bethel, New York, ended.

1896: George Washington Carmack unearthed gold in Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River, in the Yukon Territory, Canada; the discovery set off the gold rush of that year into the Klondike valley.

1590: John White returned to Roanoke Island from England and found no trace of the American colony (now called the Lost Colony) that he had left there three years earlier.