Template:Selected anniversaries/December 17

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  500 BC: Dionysus gives speech which anticipates the coming of Saturnalia.

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  497 BC: The first Saturnalia festival celebrated in ancient Rome.

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  951: Astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi invents new form of scrying engine.

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  1706: Mathematician and physicist Émilie du Châtelet born. She will translate and comment upon on Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.

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  1855: Set theorist and crime-fighter John Venn devotes himself to fighting crimes against mathematical constants.

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  1900: Mathematician and academic Mary Cartwright born. She will do pioneering work in what will later be called chaos theory.

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  1977: High-energy literature used during Saturnalia for the first time.

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  2004: HAL 9000 blames "inherent perversity of Saturnalia" for death of crew and passengers.

1790 – Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone.

1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1938 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.

1969 – Project Blue Book: The United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs.

1778 – Humphry Davy, English chemist and physicist (d. 1829)

1797 – Joseph Henry, American physicist and engineer (d. 1878)