September 17
1949
SS Noronic fire
In the pre-dawn hours of September 17, 1949, the Canadian Pacific liner SS Noronic, tied up at Pier 9 in Toronto Harbour, erupted into a fast-moving blaze that would consume the ship’s varnished interiors and claim 118 lives. What began as a small ignition in a passenger area became one of Canada’s worst peacetime maritime disasters and forced a rethinking of shipboard fire safety across the Great Lakes. Read more
1939
Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)
On September 17, 1939, the Red Army crossed the eastern border of the Second Polish Republic — moving into territories that are now western Ukraine, western Belarus and parts of Lithuania — announcing it would “restore order” after what Soviet authorities described as the collapse of the Polish state. The advance followed the secret division of Eastern Europe in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and coincided with a German invasion from the west, opening a painful chapter of occupation, mass arrests, deportations and political reordering whose consequences echoed through the war and into the Cold War era. Read more
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