On this day: February 17

February 17: Independence Day in Kosovo (2008)

Geraldine Farrar as Madame Butterfly

• 1801 – The U.S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as President and Aaron Burr as Vice President, resolving an electoral tie in the 1800 presidential election.
• 1859 – The French Navy captured the Citadel of Saigon, a fortress that was manned by 1,000 Nguyễn Dynasty soldiers, en route to conquering Saigon and other regions of southern Vietnam.
• 1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly (Geraldine Farrar in the title role pictured) premiered at La Scala in Milan, generating negative reviews that forced him to rewrite the opera.
• 1959 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to measure cloud cover distribution.
• 2006 – A massive landslide in the Philippine province of Southern Leyte killed over 1,000 people.

• More anniversaries:
  • February 16
  • February 17
  • February 18

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