History of 17 July
1917 – The British royal family adopted the Windsor name.
1920 – Sinclair Lewis finished his novel “Main Street.”
1941 – The longest hitting streak in baseball history ended when the Cleveland Indians pitchers held New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio hitless for the first time in 57 games.
1941 – Brigadier General Somervell directed Architect G. Edwin Bergstrom to have basic plans and architectural perspectives for an office building that could house 40,000 War Department employees on his desk by the following Monday morning. The building became known as the Pentagon.
1945 – U.S. President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II. During the meeting, Stalin commented that “Hitler had escaped.”
1946 – Chinese communists opened a drive against the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
1950 – The television show “The Colgate Comedy Hour” debuted featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
1954 – The Brooklyn Dodgers made history as the first team with a majority of black players.
1955 – Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA.
1960 – Francis Gary Powers pled guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
1966 – Ho Chi Minh ordered a partial mobilization of North Vietnam forces to defend against American airstrikes.
1975 – An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit. It was the first link-up between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
1979 – Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled to Miami in exile. (Florida)
1986 – The largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history took place when LTV Corporation asked for court protection from more than 20,000 creditors. LTV Corp. had debts over $4 billion.
1987 – Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Rear Admiral John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress at the “Iran-Contra” hearings.
1995 – The Nasdaq composite stock index rose above 1,000 for the first time.
1997 – After 117 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 stores.
1998 – Biologists reported that they had deciphered the genome (genetic map) of the syphilis bacterium.
2008 – In China, the construction of the Shanghai World Financial Center was completed.
2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed.
2014 – A French regional train on the Pau-Bayonne line crashes into a high-speed train near the town of Penguin, resulting in at least 25 injuries.
2015 – At least 120 people are killed and 130 injured by a suicide bombing in Diyala Governorate, Iraq.
Celebrating Birthday Today
1981 – Hely Ollarves, Venezuelan runner
1982 – Omari Banks, Anguillan cricketer
1982 – Natasha Hamilton, English singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress
1983 – Ryan Guettler, Australian motocross racer
1983 – Adam Lind, American baseball player
1985 – Loui Eriksson, Swedish ice hockey player
1985 – Tom Fletcher, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1985 – Neil McGregor, Scottish footballer
1986 – DeAngelo Smith, American football player
1986 – Lacey Von Erich, American wrestler
1987 – Darius Boyd, Australian rugby league player
1987 – Jan Charouz, Czech race car driver
1987 – Jeremih, American singer, songwriter, and record producer
1994 – Benjamin Mendy, French footballer
1994 – Kali Uchis, American singer-songwriter