Today is Wednesday, July 17, the 199th day of the 12 months 2024. There are 167 days left within the 12 months.
Today’s highlight of the story:
On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California. Construction took one 12 months and value $17 million. In its first ten weeks, the park attracted a million visitors.
Also on this date:
In 1862, throughout the Civil War, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which declared the liberty of all slaves who sought refuge behind Union lines.
In 1902, Willis Carrier designed a series of plans for what would change into the world's first modern air-con system.
In 1918, the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when right-wing army generals attempted a coup against the Second Spanish Republic.
In 1944, during World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African American, were killed when two ammunition ships exploded on the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.
In 1945, after the give up of Nazi Germany, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill met in Potsdam for the last Allied summit of World War II.
In 1975, an Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit, the primary connection of its kind between two superpowers.
In 1981, 114 people were killed when two suspension bridges over the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City collapsed during a tea dance.
In 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 certain for Europe, exploded and crashed off Long Island, New York, shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.
In 2014, all 298 passengers and crew on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine. Both the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists denied responsibility for the shooting down.
In 2020, civil rights icon John Lewis, whose bloody beating by Alabama police in 1965 helped mobilize resistance to racial segregation and who went on to a protracted and celebrated profession in Congress, died on the age of 80.
In 2022, nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting that left 21 people dead at a Texas elementary school, in response to a report, but “egregiously poor decisions” led to a chaotic scene that lasted greater than an hour before the shooter was finally caught and killed.
Today's birthdays:
- Sports reporter Verne Lundquist is 84.
- Queen Camilla of Great Britain is 77.
- Rock musician Terry “Geezer” Butler is 75.
- Actress Lucie Arnaz is 73.
- Actor David Hasselhoff is 72.
- Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is 70 years old.
- Film director Wong Kar-wai is 66.
- Television producer Mark Burnett is 64.
- Singer Regina Belle is 61.
- Country musician Craig Morgan is 60.
- Rock musician Lou Barlow is 58.
- Actress Bitty Schram (TV: “Monk”) is 56.
- Actor Jason Clarke is 55.
- Film director F. Gary Gray is 55.
- Country singer Luke Bryan is 48.
- Film director and screenwriter Justine Triet is 46.
- R&B singer Jeremih (jehr-uh-MY') is 37.
- Actor Billie Lourd is 32.
- NHL center Connor Bedard is nineteen.
Originally published:
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