Template:Selected anniversaries/December 17
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497 BC: The first Saturnalia festival celebrated in ancient Rome.
951: Astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi invents new form of scrying engine.
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)
1900 – Mary Cartwright, English mathematician and academic (d. 1998)