As the major Allied offensive masterminded by Robert Nivelle was failing miserably on the Western Front, British forces in Palestine make their second attempt to capture the city of Gaza from the Ottoman army on April 17, 1917.

In the wake of the failed British assault on Gaza of March 26, 1917, Sir Archibald Murray, commander of British forces in the region, misrepresented the battle as a clear Allied victory, claiming Turkish losses to be triple what they actually were; in truth, at 2,400 they were significantly lower than the British total of 4,000. This led London’s War Office to believe their troops were on the verge of a significant breakthrough in Palestine and to order Murray to renew the attack immediately.

Though the previous assault had caught the Turks by surprise, the second one did not: the German general in charge of the troops at Gaza, Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, was by now well aware of British intentions. By the time the British launched their second round of attacks on April 17, the Turks had accordingly strengthened their defenses and extended their forces along the road from Gaza to the nearby town of Beersheba.

Still, as in the First Battle of Gaza, British soldiers outnumbered Turkish troops by a ratio of two to one. Moreover, the British employed eight heavy Mark-1 tanks and 4,000 gas shells (used for the first time on the Palestine front) to ensure victory. The tanks proved unsuitable for the hot, dry desert conditions; however, three of them were captured by Turkish forces, which again put up a blisteringly effective defense despite their inferior numbers. After three days and heavy losses—the British casualty figure, of 6,444 men, was three times that of the Turks—Murray’s subordinate commander, Sir Charles Dobell, was forced to call off the British attacks, ending the Second Battle of Gaza with the city still firmly in Turkish control.

As a result of this second failure to capture Gaza, the Allies called in reinforcements, including Italian and French troops, which arrived from Europe in time to join the third and final Battle of Gaza that fall. Under the new regional command of Sir Edmund Allenby, the Allies finally broke through and gained control of Gaza in November 1917, leaving them free to move ahead toward Palestine’s capital city, Jerusalem, which fell into Allied hands on December 9.

Source: history.com

1492 – Christopher Columbus signed a contract with Spain to find a passage to Asia and the Indies.

1521 – Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

1524 – New York Harbor was discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.

1535 – Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain.

1629 – Horses were first imported into the colonies by the American Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1704 – John Campbell published what would eventually become the first successful American newspaper. It was known as the Boston “News-Letter.”

1758 – Frances Williams published a collection of Latin poems. He was the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere.

1808 – Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships.

1810 – Pineapple cheese was patented by Lewis M. Norton.

1824 – Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54′ 40′.

1860 – New Yorkers learned of a new law that required fire escapes to be provided for tenement houses.

1861 – Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union.

1864 – U.S. Civil War General Grant banned the trading of prisoners.

1865 – Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.

1875 – The game “snooker” was invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.

1895 – China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It was the end of the first Sino-Japanese War. In the treaty China ceded Taiwan to Japan.

1916 – The American Academy of Arts and Letters obtained a charter from the U.S. Congress.

1917 – A bill in Congress to establish Daylight Saving Time was defeated. It was passed a couple of months later.

1935 – “Lights Out” debuted on NBC Radio. It ran until 1952.

1941 – Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.

1941 – The office of Price Administration was established in the U.S. to handle rationing.

1946 – The last French troops left Syria.

1947 – Jackie Robinson (Brooklyn Dodgers) performed a bunt for his first major league hit.

1961 – About 1,400 U.S.-supported Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was an unsuccessful attack.

1964 – Jerrie Mock became first woman to fly an airplane solo around the world.

1964 – The Ford Motor Company unveiled its new Mustang model.

1967 – “The Joey Bishop Show” debuted on ABC-TV.

1967 – The U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali’s request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army.

1969 – In Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1969 – Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed.

1970 – Apollo 13 returned to Earth safely after an on-board accident with an oxygen tank.

1975 – Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It was the end of the five-year war.

1983 – In Warsaw, police routed 1,000 Solidarity supporters.

1983 – In New York, a transit strike that began on March 7 ended.

19840 – In London, demonstrators outside the Libyan Embassy were fired upon from someone inside. Eleven people were injured and an English Police woman was killed.

1985 – The U.S. Postal Service unveiled its new 22-cent, “LOVE” stamp.

1985 – In Lebanon, the cabinet resigned as Shiites took W. Beirut.

1987 – In Sri Lanka, Tamil guerrillas killed 122 people in a road ambush.

1989 – In Poland, courts gave Solidarity legal status.

1993 – A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King. Two other officers were acquitted.

1996 – Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents.

1999 – In India, the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee collapsed after losing a vote of confidence.

2002 – At the National Maritime Museum in London, the exhibit “Skin Deep – A History of Tattooing” opened.

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