July 17

180 – Twelve inhabitants of Scillium (near Kasserine, in modern day Tunisia) in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.

1203 – The Army of the Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople

1821 – The Kingdom of Spain cedes the territory of Florida to the U.S.

1850 – Vega – Alpha Lyrae – at 25 light years distance, becomes the first star, other than the Sun, to be photographed by William Bond and John Adams Whipple at the Harvard College Observatory.

1867 – The Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established in Boston, Massachusetts.

1881 – Mountain man, trapper, Army scout, and wilderness guide Jim Bridger dies, age 77, at his home near Kansas City.

1918 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered by Bolsheviks

1936 – An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the Spanish Civil War

1938 – Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the “wrong way” to Ireland and becomes known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

1944 – During World War II, at Port Chicago, California, the San Francisco Bay, the Liberty ship SS E. A. Bryana explodes while being loaded with ammunition, killing 320 people and injuring 390.

1945 – The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam.

1953 –  A Marine Corps Fairchild Packet transport aircraft crashes on takeoff from Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Florida, causing the largest number of United States Midshipman casualties in a single event, killing 38 of the 40 aboard and 5 of the 6 crew.

1955 – Disneyland is opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.

1962 – The 18 TNT ton equivalent yield W54 “Small Boy” test shot Little Feller I  becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site.

1975 – An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1981 – A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.

1996 – TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-100, explodes in the air and crashes off the Atlantic Ocean coast of Long Island, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 passengers and crew aboard.

1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court, seated in The Hague, Netherlands, to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashes into a warehouse after landing too fast and missing the end of the São Paulo–Congonhas Airport runway, killing all 187 passengers and crew aboard, and 12 more on the ground.

2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, is shot down by Russian supported forces while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew aboard.

2018 – American astronomer Scott S. Sheppard announces that his team at the Carnegie Institution for Science, has discovered a dozen new moons of Jupiter.

2022 – Indiana resident Eli Dicken takes matters into his own hands and shoots down a mass shooter at the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana.using a bog standard Glock 19 loaded with Blazer fmj ‘hardball’.