From Historynet: Today in History February 17

1454          At a grand feast, Philip the Good of Burgundy  takes the "vow of the pheasant," by which he swears to fight the Turks.

1598          Boris Godunov , the boyar of Tarar origin, is elected czar in succession to his brother-in-law Fydor .

1720          Spain signs the Treaty of the Hague with the Quadruple Alliance ending a war that was begun in 1718.

1801          The House of Representatives breaks an electoral college tie and chooses Thomas Jefferson  over 

Aaron Burr .

1864          The Confederate submarine Hunley sinks the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

1865          The South Carolina capital city, Columbia, is destroyed by fire as Major General William Tecumseh Sherman  marches through.

1909          Apache chief Geronimo  dies of pneumonia at age 80, while still in captivity at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

1919          Germany signs an armistice giving up territory in Poland.

1925          The first issue of Harold Ross'  magazine, The New Yorker, hits the stands, selling for 15 cents a copy.

1933          The League of Nations censures Japan in a worldwide broadcast.

1935          Thirty-one prisoners escape an Oklahoma prison after murdering a guard.

1938          The first color television is demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London.

1944          U.S forces land on Eniwetok atoll in the South Pacific.

1945          Gen. MacArthur's  troops land on Corregidor in the Philippines.

1951          Packard introduces its "250" Chassis Convertible.

1955          Britain announces its ability to make hydrogen bombs.

1959          The United States launches its first weather station in space, Vanguard II.

1960          Martin Luther King Jr.  is arrested in the Alabama bus boycott.

1963          Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev  visits the Berlin Wall.

1969          Russia and Peru sign their first trade accord.

1973          President Richard Nixon  names 

Patrick Gray  director of the FBI.

1975          Art by Cezanne , 

Gauguin , Renoir , and 

van Gogh , valued at $5 million, is stolen from the Municipal Museum in Milan.

1979          China begins a "pedagogical" war against Vietnam. It will last until March.

1985          Murray Haydon  becomes the third person to receive an artificial heart.