On this day: 17 May

An outnumbered Wallachian army repulsed invading Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rovine.

Pánfilo de Narváez departs Spain to explore Florida with 600 men – by 1536 only four survive.

The treaty of Zuhab ends the fifteen-year-long war between the Ottomans and the Safavids.

Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.

An allied French and Swedish army defeats Imperial and Bavarian forces in the Battle of Zusmarshausen.

Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.

The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement.

Muhammad Ali becomes Wāli of Egypt.

Emperor Napoleon I orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire.

Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian.

The Constitution of Norway is signed and Crown Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark is elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly.

Members of the Melbourne Football Club codify the first rules of Australian rules football.

American Civil War: At the Battle of Big Black River Bridge in Mississippi, Union forces under John A. McClernand defeated a Confederate rearguard and captured around 1,700 men.

Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, the first book in the Galician language.

The International Telecommunication Union, which standardizes and regulates international radio and telecommunications, was founded as the International Telegraph Union in Paris.

Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby with the jockey Oliver Lewis (2:37.75).

The opera Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, premieres at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, beginning the verismo period in Italian opera.

The first copies of the children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum were printed.

Under the Protocol of Corfu, the Principality of Albania officially recognized Northern Epirus as an autonomous self-governing region.

Spanish Civil War: The Largo Caballero government resigns in the wake of the Barcelona May Days, leading Juan Negrín to form a government, without the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, in its stead.

The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the United States' first televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City.

World War II: Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium.

After renegotiating a contract with the makers of her signature perfume Chanel No. 5, Coco Chanel (pictured) received a share of wartime profits from its sale, making her one of the richest women in the world.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing racial segregation in public schools because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and therefore unconstitutional.

In Cuba, the First Agrarian Reform Law – a cornerstone of the Cuban Revolution – is signed by Fidel Castro, aiming to eliminate large foreign-owned estates and redistribute land to over 100,000 peasants.

Six-Day War: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt.

Nolan Bushnell opens the first Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre (later renamed Chuck E. Cheese) in San Jose, California.

On the eve of presidential elections, Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path attacks a polling location in Chuschi (a town in Ayacucho), starting the Internal conflict in Peru.

General Chun Doo-hwan of South Korea seizes control of the government and declares martial law in order to suppress student demonstrations.

The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (ultimately found to be 4.2 million pounds [1.9 kt]), in response to the Appalachian Observer's Freedom of Information Act request.

Lebanon, Israel, and the United States sign an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

The General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminates homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.

Malawi holds its first multi-party elections.

The First Congo War came to an end when Laurent-Désiré Kabila proclaimed himself president of Zaire, which was also renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments. This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized Zone since 1953.