Also on this day
Lead Story
1955
Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close...
American Revolution
1776
On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress learns of General George Washington’s refusal to accept a dispatch from British General William Howe and his brother, Admiral Richard Viscount Howe, opening peace negotiations, because it failed to use the title “general.” In response, Congress proclaimed that the commander in chief...
Automotive
1920
Nils Bohlin, the Swedish engineer and inventor responsible for the three-point lap and shoulder seatbelt–considered one of the most important innovations in automobile safety–is born on July 17, 1920 in Härnösand, Sweden.
Before 1959, only two-point lap belts were available in automobiles; for the most part, the only people who...
Civil War
1864
On this day, Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaces General Joseph Johnston with John Bell Hood as commander of the Army of Tennessee. Davis, impatient with Johnston’s defensive strategy in the Atlanta campaign, felt that Hood stood a better chance of saving Atlanta from the forces of Union General William...
Cold War
1945
The final “Big Three” meeting between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain takes place towards the end of World War II. The decisions reached at the conference ostensibly settled many of the pressing issues between the three wartime allies, but the meeting was also marked by growing...
Crime
2011
On this day in 2011, Casey Anthony is released from jail in Orlando, Florida, 12 days after being acquitted on charges that she killed her 2-year-old daughter Caylee. The Casey Anthony trial riveted Americans, many of whom were stunned when a jury found the 25-year-old not guilty in her young...
Disaster
1944
An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing 332 people on this day in 1944. The United States’ World War II military campaign in the Pacific was in full swing at the time. Poor procedures and lack of training led to the disaster.
Port Chicago,...
General Interest
1938
Douglas Corrigan, the last of the early glory-seeking fliers, takes off from Floyd Bennett field in Brooklyn, New York, on a flight that would finally win him a place in aviation history.Eleven years earlier, American Charles A. Lindbergh had become an international celebrity with his solo nonstop flight across the...
1975
As part of a mission aimed at developing space rescue capability, the U.S. spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 rendezvous and dock in space. As the hatch was opened between the two vessels, commanders Thomas P. Safford and Aleksei Leonov shook hands and exchanged gifts in celebration...
1996
Shortly after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner bound for Paris explodes over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. Flight 800 had just received clearance to initiate a climb to cruise altitude when it exploded without warning. Because the plane was loaded...
Hollywood
1956
On this day in 1956, the movie-musical High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra, opens in theaters around the United States. The film’s tag line–”They’re all together for the first time”–referenced High Society’s all-star cast. High Society marked the last feature film Grace Kelly made before marrying...
Literary
1889
Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of crime-solving attorney Perry Mason, is born on this day in Madlen, Massachusetts.
Gardner attended college in Indiana but dropped out and moved to Southern California. He worked as a typist in a law firm for three years, then became an attorney himself. As a trial lawyer...
Music
1967
On July 17, 1967, one of the oddest musical pairings in history comes to an end when Jimi Hendrix dropped out as the opening act for teenybopper sensations The Monkees.
The booking of psychedelic rock god Jimi Hendrix with the made-for-television Monkees was the brainchild of Hendrix’s manager, Mike Jeffery, who...
Old West
1763
Destined to make a fortune from the furs of the American West, John Jacob Astor is born in modest circumstances in the small German village of Waldorf.
Although the number of foreign immigrants to the U.S. who succeeded in striking it rich is often exaggerated in the popular mind, Astor’s brilliant...
1870
A drunken brawl turns deadly when “Wild Bill” Hickok shoots two soldiers in self-defense, mortally wounding one of them.
William Hickok had earned his reputation as a gunslinger a decade earlier after shooting three men in a gunfight in Nebraska. He parlayed his standing as a sure-shooting gunman into a haphazard...
Presidential
1945
On this day in 1945, President Harry S. Truman records his first impressions of Stalin in his diary.
Truman described his initial meeting with the intimidating Soviet leader as cordial. “Promptly a few minutes before twelve” the president wrote, “I looked up from the desk and there stood Stalin in the...
Sports
1941
On this day in 1941, New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio fails to get a hit against the Cleveland Indians, which brings his historic 56-game hitting streak to an end. The record run had captivated the country for two months.
Joseph Paul DiMaggio was born November 25, 1914, in Martinez,...
Vietnam War
1972
South Vietnamese paratroopers fight their way to within 200 yards of the Citadel in Quang Tri City, which was described by reporters who accompanied the troops as a city of rubble and ash. Citizens emerging from neighborhoods retaken by the paratroopers joined the refugees, who had been streaming south toward...
World War I
1917
On this day in 1917, a three-day stretch of fighting in the streets peaks in Petrograd after the provisional government falls temporarily amid anger and frustration within and outside the army due to the continuing hardships caused by Russia’s participation in World War I.
Despite devastating losses on the Eastern Front...
World War II
1945
On this day in 1945, the conference of Allied victors at Potsdam, outside of Berlin, begins, with U.S. President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in attendance.
The issues at hand for the Big Three and their staffs were the administration of a defeated...
