DailyKnowledge History Edition
Saturday 17 October 2026
Streak 0
SCORE 0/5
FILE NO. 10.17 5 specimens · est. 1849-1973

What happened on October 17?

Real photographs, all filed under this date. Name each event before you read on.
Case Timeline 1849-1973 · 124 years
You’re reading an archived file from October 17. Scores here don’t count toward the leaderboard. Today’s file

What happened on October 17

All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1849 to 1973, with the story behind each photograph.

Reveal the full answer key
  1. A colour photograph looking down a long queue of 1970s cars and pickup trucks waiting bumper to bumper at a petrol station, a tall illuminated sign overhead.
    Politics · 1973

    Oil producers cut output and quadruple the price within months

    Arab oil producers announced cuts in production on 17 October 1973 and an embargo on states supporting Israel in the war then being fought. The price of crude roughly quadrupled inside a few months. Western countries introduced speed limits, rationing and car-free Sundays, and the era of cheap energy ended.

  2. A black and white portrait of a heavy-set man in a three-piece suit and patterned tie, hair slicked back, looking steadily at the camera.
    Crime · 1931

    A gang boss the police could never touch is convicted of tax evasion

    Al Capone was convicted on 17 October 1931 of failing to pay income tax and sentenced to eleven years. Prosecutors had never been able to pin a killing on him. He served most of the sentence in Alcatraz, by then suffering from untreated syphilis, and was released in 1939 with the mental capacity of a child.

  3. A colour photograph of an industrial site with two concrete cooling towers venting steam, tall chimneys and a concrete reactor hall, with 1950s cars parked on a track in the foreground.
    Engineering · 1956

    A queen opens the first nuclear station to sell power to a national grid

    Elizabeth II opened Calder Hall in Cumberland on 17 October 1956, the first nuclear power station anywhere to deliver electricity to a national grid on a commercial scale. Its other purpose, less advertised at the time, was producing plutonium for weapons. It ran for 47 years.

  4. A man in a dark suit seated at a table crowded with coils, keys and brass instruments joined by looping wires, holding a length of wire in one hand.
    Technology · 1907

    A wireless service opens that lets the public send messages across an ocean

    Marconi opened the first commercial transatlantic wireless telegraph service on 17 October 1907, between Ireland and Nova Scotia. It undercut the cable companies immediately. The service was unreliable at first and worked far better at night, which nobody could explain until the ionosphere was discovered two decades later.

  5. An early photograph of a gaunt young man with long hair and a slight frown, seated in a heavy overcoat with one hand resting on his knee.
    Music · 1849

    A composer who wrote almost only for the piano dies at 39

    Chopin died in Paris on 17 October 1849, probably of tuberculosis, aged 39. Almost everything he wrote was for solo piano, and he hated performing in large halls; he gave around thirty public concerts in his life. He asked for his heart to be taken back to Warsaw, and it was, sealed in a jar and hidden through two wars.