| 29701 | March 17 | Event | 1921 – The Second Polish Republic adopts the March Constitution. |
| 29702 | March 17 | Event | 1939 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanchang between the Kuomintang and Japan begins, |
| 29703 | March 17 | Event | 1941 – In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. |
| 29704 | March 17 | Event | 1942 – Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland. |
| 29705 | March 17 | Event | 1945 – The Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany, collapses, ten days after its capture. |
| 29706 | March 17 | Event | 1947 – First flight of the B-45 Tornado strategic bomber. |
| 29707 | March 17 | Event | 1948 – The Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO. |
| 29708 | March 17 | Event | 1950 – Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley announce the creation of element 98, which they name "californium". |
| 29709 | March 17 | Event | 1957 – A plane crash in Cebu, Philippines kills Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others. |
| 29710 | March 17 | Event | 1958 – The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite. |
| 29711 | March 17 | Event | 1959 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet for India. |
| 29712 | March 17 | Event | 1960 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion. |
| 29713 | March 17 | Event | 1963 – Mount Agung erupted on Bali killing more than 1,100 people. |
| 29714 | March 17 | Event | 1966 – Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb. |
| 29715 | March 17 | Event | 1968 – As a result of nerve gas testing in Skull Valley, Utah, over 6,000 sheep are found dead. |
| 29716 | March 17 | Event | 1969 – Golda Meir becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel. |
| 29717 | March 17 | Event | 1970 – My Lai Massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident. |
| 29718 | March 17 | Event | 1973 – The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, depicting a former prisoner of war being reunited with his family, which came to symbolize the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War. |
| 29719 | March 17 | Event | 1979 – The Penmanshiel Tunnel collapses during engineering works, killing two workers. |
| 29720 | March 17 | Event | 1985 – Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles murder spree. |
| 29721 | March 17 | Event | 1988 – A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into a mountainside near the Venezuelan border killing 143. |
| 29722 | March 17 | Event | 1988 – Eritrean War of Independence: The Nadew Command, an Ethiopian army corps in Eritrea, is attacked on three sides by military units of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in the opening action of the Battle of Afabet. |
| 29723 | March 17 | Event | 1992 – Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires: Suicide car bomb attack kills 29 and injures 242. |
| 29724 | March 17 | Event | 1992 – A referendum to end apartheid in South Africa is passed 68.7% to 31.2%. |
| 29725 | March 17 | Event | 2000 – Five hundred thirty members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in a fire, considered to be a mass murder or suicide orchestrated by leaders of the cult. Elsewhere another 248 members are later found |
| 29726 | March 17 | Event | 2003 – Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Robin Cook, resigns from the British Cabinet in disagreement with government plans for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. |
| 29727 | March 17 | Event | 2004 – Unrest in Kosovo: More than 22 are killed and 200 wounded. Thirty-five Serbian Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Belgrade and Niš are destroyed. |
| 29728 | March 17 | Event | 2013 – The largest meteorite (since NASA started observing the Moon in 2005) hit the Moon. |
| 29729 | March 17 | Birth | 1231 – Emperor Shijō of Japan (d. 1242) |
| 29730 | March 17 | Birth | 1473 – James IV of Scotland (d. 1513) |