June 17

• June 17, 362
  Roman emperor Julian decrees religious toleration in the empire and attempts to reestablish paganism
• June 17, 1397
  The Union of Kalmar, which grows out of the dynastic ties of the Scandinavian countries, unites Denmark, Sweden and Norway under one monarch
• June 17, 1579
  Sir Francis Drake sails into San Francisco Bay and proclaims English sovereignty over New Albion in modern-day California
• June 17, 1696
  John III Sobieski, King of Lithuania and Poland, dies
• June 17, 1767
  English navigator Samuel Wallis becomes the first European to visit Tahiti in existing records
• June 17, 1789
  The Third Estate of the Estates-General in France declare itself a national assembly, and undertake to frame a constitution
• June 17, 1797
  Mohammad Khan Qajar, cruel ruler of Persia, is killed, and his nephew Fath Ali Shah succeeded him
• June 17, 1848
  Austrian General Alfred Windisch-Grätz crushes a Czech uprising in Prague against Habsburg control
• June 17, 1930
  United States President Herbert Hoover signs the Hawley-Smoot Tariff bill, which increases some 900 American import duties, so contributing to the depth of the Depression
• June 17, 1942
  First World War II American expeditionary force lands in Africa
• June 17, 1944
  Republic of Iceland proclaimed at Thingvallir, Iceland
• June 17, 1950
  Julius Rosenberg is arrested in the US on suspicion of espionage, accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union
• June 17, 1967
  China becomes world's fourth thermonuclear power
• June 17, 1972
  Five men are arrested for breaking and entering into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex, beginning the Watergate scandal