17 July History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1453    -    France defeats England at Castillon, France, ending the Hundred Years' War.
  • 1762    -    Peter III of Russia is murdered and his wife, Catherine II, takes the throne.
  • 1785    -    France limits the importation of goods from Britain.
  • 1791    -    National Guard troops open fire on a crowd of demonstrators in Paris.
  • 1799    -    Ottoman forces, supported by the British, capture Aboukir, Egypt from the French.
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  • 1801    -    The U.S. fleet arrives in Tripoli.
  • 1815    -    Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders to the British at Rochefort, France.
  • 1821    -    Andrew Jackson becomes the governor of Florida.
  • 1864    -    Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaces General Joseph E. Johnston with General John Bell Hood in hopes of defeating Union General William T. Sherman outside Atlanta.
  • 1898    -    U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter take Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
  • 1944    -    Field Marshall Erwin Rommel is wounded when an Allied fighter strafes his staff car in France.
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  • 1946    -    Chinese communists attack the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
  • 1960    -    American pilot Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court.
  • 1966    -    Ho Chi Minh orders a partial mobilization of North Vietnam to defend against American airstrikes.
  • 1987    -    Lt. Col. Oliver North and Rear Adm. John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal.

  • 17 July Birthdays

  • 1674    -    Isaac Watts, English minister and hymn writer.
  • 1763    -    John Jacob Astor, American fur trader and entrepreneur.
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  • 1888    -    S.Y. Agnon, Israeli writer (The Day Before Yesterday).
  • 1889    -    Erle Stanley Gardner, detective writer, creator of Perry Mason.
  • 1894    -    Georges Lemaitre, Belgian astronomer.
  • 1898    -    Bernice Abbott, photographer.
  • 1899    -    James Cagney, American actor (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mister Roberts).
  • 1902    -    Christina E. Stead, novelist and screenwriter.
  • 1912    -    Art Linkletter, radio and television personality.
  • 1922    -    Donald Davie, English poet and literary critic.
  • 1923    -    James Purdy, writer (Cabot Wright Begins).
  • 1925    -    Laszlo Nagy, Hungarian poet.
  • 1935    -    Peter Schickele, composer, creator of P.D.Q. Bach.