16-year-old Antoinette Rappal. May 23 A month of civil violence in Milan, Italy ends, after the Italian army forcibly takes over the city from anarchists and anti-war revolutionaries; 50 people are killed and 800 arrested. WWI: During the Stalemate in Southern Palestine the Raid on the Beersheba to Hafir el Auja railway, by the British Desert Column, large sections of the railway line linking Beersheba to the main Ottoman desert base are destroyed. May 26 – A tornado strikes Mattoon, Illinois, causing devastation and killing 101 people. May 27 – WWI: 1917 French Army mutinies: Over 30,000 French troops refuse to go to the trenches at Missy-aux-Bois. May 27 – Pope Benedict XV promulgates the 1917 Code of Canon Law. June June 1 – 1917 French Army mutinies: A French infantry regiment seizes Missy-aux-Bois, and declares an anti-war military government. Other French army troops soon apprehend them. June 4 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe Elliott and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography, (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history, for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert Bayard Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism, for his work for the New York World. June 5 – WWI: Conscription begins in the United States. June 7 – WWI: Battle of Messines opens with the British Army detonating 24 ammonal mines under the German lines, killing 10,000 in the deadliest deliberate non-nuclear man-made explosion in history. June 8 – Speculator Mine disaster: A fire at the Granite Mountain and Speculator ore mine, outside Butte, Montana, kills at least 168 workers. June 11 – King Constantine I of Greece abdicates for the first time, being succeeded by his son Alexander. June 13 – WWI: The first major German bombing raid on London by fixed-wing aircraft leaves 162 dead and 432 injured. June 15 – The United States enacts the Espionage Act. July July – The first Cottingley Fairies photographs are taken in Yorkshire, England, apparently depicting fairies (a hoax not admitted by the child creators until 1981). July 1 East St. Louis riot: A labor dispute ignites a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, which leaves 250 dead. Russian General Brusilov begins the major Kerensky Offensive in Galicia, initially advancing towards Lemberg. July 2 – WWI: Greece joins the war on the side