August 17
Indonesia's declaration of independence from The Netherlands
Jan Pieterszoon Coen, detail of an oil painting by an anonymous artist, first half of the 17th …
1945: 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.
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. |
