Today is July 17. On this date in:
1821
Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
1862
During the Civil War, Congress approved the Second Confiscation Act, which declared that all slaves taking refuge behind Union lines were to be set free.
1918
Bolsheviks executed Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family.
1935
Cincinnati’s Chester Park amusement park on Spring Grove Avenue had its last day.
1936
The Spanish Civil War began as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic.
1941
Yankees great Joe DiMaggio ended his 56-game hitting streak, going hitless against the Cleveland Indians. (His hit streak record still stands.)
1944
During World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, were killed when a pair of ammunition ships exploded at Port Chicago Naval Magazine,California.
1945
Following Nazi Germany’s surrender, President Harry S. 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.
1954
The two-day inaugural Newport Jazz Festival, billed as “The First American Jazz Festival,” opened in Rhode Island.
1955
Disneyland had its opening day in Anaheim, California, covered by a 90-minute live television special on ABC.
Our history: Locals had hand in making Disneyland a reality
1959
Singer Billie Holiday died in New York at age 44.
1961
Baseball Hall-of-Famer Ty Cobb died in Atlanta at age 74.
1975
An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.
1981
A pair of suspended walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a tea dance, killing 114 people.
1996
TWA Flight 800, a Europe-bound Boeing 747, exploded and crashed off Long Island, New York, shortly after departing John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.
1997
Woolworth Corp. announced it was closing its 400 remaining five-and-dime stores across the country, ending 117 years in business.
2009
Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died in New York at 92.
2014
Eric Garner, an unarmed black man accused of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, died shortly after being wrestled to the ground by New York City police officers; a video of the takedown showed Garner repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.” (Garner’s family received $5.9 million from the city in 2015 to settle a wrongful death claim.)
2014
All 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine; both Ukraine’s government and pro-Russian separatists denied responsibility.
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