February 28 » Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, is deposed by a French military force.
April 30 » J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London.
May 26 » Dracula, a Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, is published.
June 22 » British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst are assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, who are later caught and hanged.
August 2 » Anglo-Afghan War: The Siege of Malakand ends when a relief column is able to reach the British garrison in the Malakand states.
August 31 » Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector.
Day of death May 17, 1955
The temperature on May 17, 1955 was between 6.6 °C and 15.0 °C and averaged 10.6 °C. There was 21.6 mm of rain during 13.5 hours. There was 0.1 hours of sunshine (1%). The almost completely overcast was. The average windspeed was 4 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the south. Source: KNMI
July 17 » Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.
August 28 » Black teenager Emmett Till is brutally murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent civil rights movement.
September 16 » A Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.
December 1 » American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to that city's bus boycott.
December 8 » The Flag of Europe is adopted by Council of Europe.
December 31 » General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: F. van Dijk, "Family tree Van Dijk", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom_van_dijk/R38487.php : accessed January 14, 2026), "Johannes Franciscus Snijders (1897-1955)".
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