1917
year
1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1917th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 917th year of the 2nd millennium, the 17th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1910s decade. As of the start of 1917, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Events
January
January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's Desert Column.
January 10 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: Seven survivors of the Ross Sea party are rescued after being stranded for several months.
January 11 – Unknown saboteurs set off the Kingsland explosion at Kingsland (modern-day Lyndhurst, New Jersey), one of the events leading to United States involvement in WWI.
January 16 – The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million (equivalent to $628 million in 2025).
January 22 – WWI: United States President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Germany.
January 25 – WWI: British armed merchantman SS Laurentic is sunk by mines off Lough Swilly (Ireland), with the loss of 354 of the 475 aboard.
January 26 – The sea defences at the English village of Hallsands are breached, leading to all but one of the houses becoming uninhabitable.
January 28 – The United States ends its search for Pancho Villa.
January 30 – Pershing's troops in Mexico begin withdrawing back to the United States.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1917” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2092. The Library of Congress control number is sh2001005471. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1923 and 2025.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1917”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1917 primary sources, 1917 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1917”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1917” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.