This day in history

                                                         This day in history

                                          17th of February

1598 –Boris Godunov became Russian Tsar. After the death of the childless Feodor on 7 January 1598, self-preservation as much as ambition led Boris to seize the throne. His election was proposed by Patriarch Job of Moscow, who believed that Boris was the one man capable of coping with the difficulties of the situation. Boris, however, would accept the throne only from the Zemsky Sobor, national assembly, which met on 17 February .

During the first years of his reign, he was both popular and prosperous, and ruled well. He recognized the need for Russia to catch up with the intellectual progress of the West and did his best to bring about educational and social reforms. He was the first tsar to import foreign teachers on a large scale, the first to send young Russians abroad to be educated, and the first to allow Lutheran churches to be built in Russia. After the Russo–Swedish War (1590–1595), he felt the necessity of access to the Baltic Sea and attempted to obtain Livonia by diplomatic means. He cultivated friendly relations with the Scandinavians and hoped to take a bride from a foreign royal house, there by increasing the dignity of his own dynasty. However he declined the personal union proposed to him in 1600 by the diplomatic mission led by Lew Sapieha from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Boris died after a lengthy illness and a stroke on 13/23 April 1605. He left one son, Feodor II, who succeeded him and ruled for only a few months, until he and Boris' widow were murdered by the enemies of the Godunovs in Moscow on 10/20 June 1605.

1600 –The philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned alive, for heresy, at Campo de' Fiori in Rome.

 Giordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model: while supporting its heliocentrism, he also correctly proposed that the Sun was just another star moving in space, and claimed as well that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. The Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy, and he was burned at the stake. After his death he gained considerable fame, particularly among 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who, focusing on his astronomical beliefs, regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas.

1814 –  During War of the Sixth Coalition ( a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States against France after the failure of Napoleon’s invasion to Russia. Coalition  finally defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba) the battle of Montro took place. One of the most important parts of this battle, The Battle of Mormans, was fought on 17 February 1814 and resulted in the victory of the French army under Napoleon Bonaparte against the Russians and Württembergers under Count Petr Petrovich Pahlen. It was one of the last victories of Napoleon’s army.

1933 - The Blaine Act ended Prohibition in the United States.

Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. The dry movement, led by rural Protestants and social Progressives in the Democratic and Republican parties, was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Prohibition was mandated under the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol was not made illegal under federal law; however, in many areas local laws were more strict, with some states banning possession outright. In 1933 The Blaine Act was sponsored by Wisconsin Senator John J. Blaine and passed by the United States Senate on February 17, 1933. It initiated the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which established Prohibition in the United States.

1944 – The Korsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive  ended.

The Korsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive led to the Battle of the Korsun–Cherkasy Pocket . The offensive was part of the Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive. In it, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, commanded, respectively, by Nikolai Vatutin and Ivan Konev, trapped German forces of Army Group South in a pocket near the Dnieper river. During weeks of fighting, the two Red Army Fronts tried to eradicate the pocket. The encircled German units broke out in coordination with a relief attempt by other German forces, with «roughly two out of three» encircled men succeeding in escaping the pocket, «and almost one third of their men ... dead or prisoners.»

The Soviet victory at Korsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive created a large gap in the German defensive lines in Ukraine, and created conditions for the Red Army to attack in multiple directions and cut the German Army Group South in half, forcing the German army to retreat from Ukraine three months later.

It was one of the biggest victories of Red Army during the GPW. Some military historians call it «The second Stalingrad».

1979 - The Sino-Vietnamese War began. The Sino-Vietnamese, also known as the Third Indochina War, was a brief border war fought between the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in early 1979. China launched the offensive in response to Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia in 1978 (which ended the reign of the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge). Chinese Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping saw this as a Soviet attempt "to extend its evil tentacles to Southeast Asia and...carry out expansion there," which reflected the long-standing Sino-Soviet split. The Chinese entered northern Vietnam and captured some of the bordering cities. On March 6, 1979, China declared that the gate to Hanoi was open and that their punitive mission had been achieved. Chinese forces retreated into China. Both China and Vietnam claimed victory in this war; as Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia until 1989 it can be said that China failed to achieve the goal of preventing Vietnam from involvement in Cambodia. However, Moscow surely realized that any attempt at expanding its foothold in Southeast Asia would have involved risk of military confrontation with China. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Sino-Vietnamese border was finalized.

China demonstrated to its Cold War Communist adversary, the Soviet Union, that they were unable to protect their new Vietnamese ally. Following worsening relations between the Soviet Union and China as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, as many as 1.5 million Chinese troops were stationed along the Soviet-Chinese border, in preparation for a full-scale war.

2008 – Kosovo declared independence. The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence was adopted on 17 February 2008 by the Assembly of Kosovo. The participants unanimously declared Kosovo to be independent from Serbia, while all 11 representatives of the Serb minority boycotted the proceedings. It was the second declaration of independence by Kosovo's Albanian-majority political institutions, the first was proclaimed on 7 September 1990. The legality of the declaration and whether it was an act of the Assembly has been disputed. Serbia sought international validation and support for its stance that the declaration was illegal, and in October 2008 requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice. The Court determined that the declaration did not violate international law.

2011 – Libyan protests began. In Bahrain, security forces launched a deadly pre-dawn raid on protesters in Pearl Roundabout in Manama, the day is locally known as Bloody Thursday. This protests were the reflection of Libyan people to Arab spring (2011) and (in opinion of many analytics) result of many-years work of special services of NATO countries. This protests became the beginning of Libyan revolution which became  the end of Kaddafi regime and independent Libya.