◆ On this day

August 17

4 sourced moments from August 17 in history: Fulton's Steamboat Conquers the Hudson (1807); Klondike gold claims were staked on Bonanza Creek (1896); Peter Fechter Was Shot at the Berlin Wall (1962), plus 1 more.

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4 things happened on August 17

newest first ↓

1978 Technology · Transportation

The first crewed transatlantic balloon flight succeeded

After more than a century of fatal attempts, a helium balloon from Maine finally drifted across the Atlantic into a French field.

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1962 History · Modern

Peter Fechter Was Shot at the Berlin Wall

He bled to death in plain sight at the foot of the Wall, becoming its most public early victim and a symbol of the Cold War's cruelty.

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1896 Earth & Climate · Geology

Klondike gold claims were staked on Bonanza Creek

A day after a glint in a Yukon creek bed, three prospectors pounded in stakes that would launch one of history's great gold rushes.

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1807 Technology · Transportation

Fulton's Steamboat Conquers the Hudson

When a smoke-belching paddle wheeler chugged from New York toward Albany, skeptics who'd mocked "Fulton's Folly" fell silent.

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