17 July History
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.