On this day

March 17, 1942

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from March 17, 1942

Notable Births

John Wayne Gacy

1942John Wayne Gacy, American serial killer and rapist (died 1994)[†]

John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured and murdered at least thirty-three young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He became known as the "Killer Clown" due to his public performances as a clown prior to the discovery of his crimes.

Yoko Yamamoto

1942Yoko Yamamoto, Japanese actress (died 2024)[†]

Yoko Yamamoto was a Japanese actress represented by Kabushikigaisha Sanyō Kikaku. Yamamoto was born on March 17, 1942, and died on February 20, 2024, at the age of 81.

Notable Deaths

Nada Dimić

1942Nada Dimić, People's Hero of Yugoslavia, victim of Genocide of Serbs (born 1923)[†]

Nada Dimić was a Yugoslav Partisan who died in World War II and was proclaimed a People's Hero of Yugoslavia.

Historical Events

The Holocaust

1942Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland.[†]

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups.