Updated January 17, 2014, 1:28 pm

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On Jan. 17, 1893, Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.

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On Jan. 17, 1899, Al Capone, the American gangster and prohibition era crime leader , was born. Following his death on Jan. 25, 1947, his obituary appeared in The Times.

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1562	French Protestants were recognized under the Edict of St. Germain.
1706	Statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston.
1806	Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha, gave birth to James Madison Randolph, the first child born in the White House.
1893	Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown.
1893	Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, died in Fremont, Ohio, at age 70.
1899	Gangster Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
1945	Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
1945	Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, was taken into Soviet custody in Budapest, Hungary. (His fate has never been determined.)
1946	The United Nations Security Council held its first meeting.
1977	Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.
1994	A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck Southern California, killing at least 61 people and causing $20 billion worth of damage.
1995	A magnitude 7.2 earthquake devastated the city of Kobe, Japan; more than 6,000 people were killed.
1997	A court in Ireland granted the first divorce in the Roman Catholic country's history.
1998	President Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to testify as a defendant in a criminal or civil suit when he answered questions from lawyers for Paula Jones, who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment.
2001	Faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.
2008	Chess master Bobby Fischer died at age 64.

Historic Birthdays

62	Philip II of Burgandy 1/17/1342 - 4/27/1404 French Duke
59	Guarino Guarini 1/17/1624 - 3/6/1683 Italian architect
69	Jacques-Francois Blondel 1/17/1705 - 1/9/1774 French architect
29	Anne Bronte 1/17/1820 - 5/28/1849 English novelist
82	David Lloyd George 1/17/1863 - 3/26/1945 English Prime Minister
80	Mack Sennett 1/17/1880 - 11/5/1960 American director/producer
69	Glenn Martin 1/17/1886 - 12/4/1955 American airplane inventor
61	Nevil Shute 1/17/1899 - 1/12/1960 English/Australian writer
78	Robert M. Hutchins 1/17/1899 - 5/14/1977 American educator
67	Nora Kaye 1/17/1920 - 2/28/1987 American ballerina
34	Thomas Dooley 1/17/1927 - 1/18/1961 American physician/author