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Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: Peter Norbeck (Republican) (until January 2), William H. McMaster (Republican) (starting January 2)
Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Albert E. Hill (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), W. R. Crabtree (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in the official relations with Germany
February 24: The Zimmermann Telegram is shown to the U.S. government.
January 1 – The University of Oregon defeats the University of Pennsylvania 14–0 in college football's 3rd Annual Rose Bowl.
January 10 – The Silent Sentinels begin their protest in favor of women's suffrage in front of the White House.
January 11 – German saboteurs set off the Kingsland Explosion at Kingsland, New Jersey (modern-day Lyndhurst), one of the events leading to U.S. involvement in World War I.
January 22 – World War I: PresidentWoodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe.
January 25
The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million.
An anti-prostitution drive in San Francisco attracts huge crowds to public meetings. At one meeting attended by 7,000 people, 20,000 are kept out for lack of room. In a conference with Rev. Paul Smith, an outspoken foe of prostitution, 300 prostitutes make a plea for toleration, explaining they had been forced into the practice by poverty. When Smith asks if they will take other work at $8 to $10 a week, the ladies laugh derisively, which loses them public sympathy. The police close about 200 houses of prostitution shortly thereafter.[1]
January 28 – The United States ends its search for Pancho Villa.
January 30 – Pershing's troops in Mexico begin withdrawing back to the United States. They reach Columbus, New Mexico February 5.
February 3 – World War I: The United States breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany.
February 5
Congress and Senate override a veto by President Woodrow Wilson to reinstate the Immigration Act of 1917, which allows more restrictions on immigration to the U.S., including the wholesale ban of people from much of Asia.[2]
The U.S. Army force under command of John J. Pershing reached Columbus, New Mexico, ending the Pancho Villa Expedition.[3]
February 24 – World War I: United States ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter H. Page, is shown the intercepted Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany offers to give Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico back to Mexico if Mexico declares war on the United States.
March 1 – The U.S. government releases the plaintext of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public.
March 2 – The enactment of the Jones Act grants Puerto Ricans United States citizenship.
March 4
President Woodrow Wilson and Vice President Thomas R. Marshall begin their second terms.
Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman member of the United States House of Representatives.
March 7 – "Livery Stable Blues", recorded with "Dixie Jazz Band One Step" on February 26 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, becomes the first jazz recording commercially released. On August 17 the band records "Tiger Rag".
March 8 – The United States Senate adopts the cloture rule in order to limit filibusters.
March 26 – The Seattle Metropolitans become the first team based in the United States to win the Stanley Cup.
March 31 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies, which become the US Virgin Islands, after paying $25 million to Denmark.
April 10 – Eddystone explosion: an explosion at an ammunition plant near Chester, Pennsylvania, kills 139, mostly female workers.
April 27 – Hastings mine explosion: an explosion in a coal mine in Colorado kills 121.
May 18 – World War I: The Selective Service Act passes the U.S. Congress, giving the President the power of conscription.
April 19 – World War I: Army transport SS Mongolia(1903) fires the U.S.'s first shots in anger in the war when her gun crew drives off a German U-boat in the English Channel.[4]
May 21 – The Great Atlanta fire of 1917 destroyers over 300 acres (73 blocks).
May 26 – A tornado strikes Mattoon, Illinois, causing devastation and killing 101 people.
June 4 – The very first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days.Herbert Bayard Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
June 5 – World War I: Conscription in the United States begins.
June 8 – Speculator Mine disaster: a fire at the Granite Mountain and Speculator ore mine outside Butte, Montana kills 168 workers.
June 13 – Phillips Petroleum Company incorporated in Oklahoma.
June 15 – The U.S. enacts the Espionage Act.
July–September[]
July 1 – A labor dispute ignites a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, which leaves 250 dead.
July 12 – The Phelps Dodge Corporation deports over 1,000 suspected IWW members from Bisbee, Arizona.
July 28 – The Silent Protest is organized by the NAACP in New York to protest the East St. Louis Riot of July 2, as well as lynchings in Texas and Tennessee.
August
The Green Corn Rebellion, an uprising by several hundred farmers against the World War I draft, takes place in central Oklahoma.
The Messenger, a political and literary magazine by and for African-Americans, begins publication in New York City.[5]
August 3 – The New York Guard is founded.
August 23 – Following the detention of an African American soldier, 150 soldiers of the 24th Infantry Regiment march on Houston in what would be called the Houston Riot; four soldiers and 15 civilians die and, following courts-martial, 19 soldiers are hanged.
October–December[]
October 12 – The first regiment is stationed at the newly commissioned Naval Operating Base in Norfolk, VA.[6]
October 19 – Dallas Love Field opens as an airfield in Texas.
November 14 – Night of Terror: The superintendent of the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia orders the guards to brutalize the suffragist inmates.
November 17 – Action of 17 November 1917: United States NavydestroyersUSS Fanning and USS Nicholson capture Imperial German NavyU-boatSM U-58 off the south-west coast of Ireland, the first combat action in which U.S. ships take a submarine (which is then scuttled).
November 24 – In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 9 members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most fatal single event in U.S. police history until the September 11, 2001 attacks.
December 1 to 31 – A severe cold wave in Interior Alaska produces the coldest recorded mean monthly temperatures in the United States. Fort Yukon averages −48.3 °F or −44.6 °C and Eagle −46 °F or −43.3 °C.[8]
December 6 – U.S. NavydestroyerUSS Jacob Jones is torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by German submarine U-53, killing 66 crew in the first significant American naval loss of the war.[9]
December 20 – Shepherdsville train wreck kills 49 and injuries 52 people. It becomes the deadliest train wreck in Kentucky history.
December 25 – Why Marry?, the first dramatic play to win a Pulitzer Prize, opens at the Astor Theatre in New York City.
December 26 – United States president Woodrow Wilson uses the Federal Possession and Control Act to place most U.S. railroads under the United States Railroad Administration, with the aim of transporting troops and materials for the war effort more efficiently.
Undated[]
George Drumm writes the concert march "Hail, America" in New York City.
The calendar year is the coolest averaged over the contiguous United States in mean temperature (average of 50.06 °F or 10.03 °C against a long-term average of 51.86 °F or 11.03 °C)[10] and minimum temperature (37.62 °F or 3.12 °C against a long-term average of 39.84 °F or 4.36 °C).[11] it is also the second-driest with a coast-to-coast average precipitation of 25.35 inches or 643.9 millimetres against a long-term mean of 29.57 inches or 751.1 millimetres.[12]
^Cyrulik, John M. (2003). A Strategic Examination of the Punitive Expedition Into Mexico, 1916–1917. US Army Command and General Staff College. pp. 67–68.
^"Mongolia". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command. Retrieved 2017-04-25.
^Baugess, James S.; DeBolt, Abbe Allen (2012). Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture Volume 1. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. p. 259. ISBN978-0-31332-945-6.