On This Day: 17 July

The earliest allusion to a complete obscuration of the Sun is written in China		709 BC
A coalition army of Aragonese, Navarrese, and French troops under Alfonso I of Aragon ('the Battler') is attacked and defeated by ibn–Ganiya's Almoravid army in the Battle of Fraga		1134
Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos flees into exile after the Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople by assault		1203
Christians defeat the Muslim leader Caliph Mohammed al–Nasr near Toledo, Spain		1212
King Charles VII of France is crowned in Reims Cathedral, after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc		1429
In the Battle of Castillon (in Gascony), which proves to be the last battle of Hundred Years' War, the French under Jean Bureau defeat the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who is killed in the battle		1453
Martin Frobisher reaches Baffin Land (Island?)		1577
Handel's Water Music is premiered as George I sails down the Thames with a barge of fifty musicians		1717
The Bridgewater Canal (Worsley to Manchester) is opened		1761
Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia		1762
During an exploration of the Coppermine River (in what is now Nunavut) by Samuel Hearne, an employee of the Hudson Bay Company, some twenty unsuspecting Inuit men, women and children are slaughtered by his Chipewyan Indian guides. Hearne is devastated by the incident, and names the place where it occurred Bloody Falls		1771
The Swedish fleet is destroyed by the Russians		1788
Thomas Saint of London patents the first sewing machine		1790
Scores of people lose their lives when members of the French National Guard, under the command of Royalist general the Marquis de Lafayette, open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobin protesters at the Champ de Mars in Paris		1791
Charlotte Corday is executed for the murder of Jean–Paul Marat		1793
The Martyrs of Compiègne – sixteen members of the Carmel of Compiègne, in northern France – are guillotined for refusing to comply with the suppression of their monastery		1794
The US Navy blockades Tripoli after Congress refuses to pay the Pasha's 'protection money'		1801
Napoleon surrenders to the British at Rochefort		1815
Spain cedes the territory of Florida to the United States		1821
The first issue of Punch magazine is published		1841
The Battle of Waitzen ends		1849
Astronomer George Phillips Bond makes the first photograph of a star		1850
General Havelock takes Cawnpore after defeating Nana Sahib		1857
Cecil Rhodes becomes Prime Minister of Cape Colony		1890
Nippon Electric Company (NEC) is founded by Nippon Electric Limited Partnership and Western Electric, an American company – the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital		1899
American engineer Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioning system in Buffalo, New York		1902
Dr. Robert Bridges appointed Poet Laureate		1913
King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor		1917
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and family are murdered by Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk)		1918
RMS Carpathia – the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic in 1912 – is sunk off Ireland by a German U–boat, with the loss of five lives		1918
The Cenotaph is unveiled in Whitehall, London		1920
'Altona Bloody Sunday' – a violent confrontation in Hamburg between the Nazi Party's paramiliary wing (Sturmabteilung) and Schutzstaffel (SS), the police and Communist Party supporters – leaves 18 people dead		1932
The Spanish Civil War begins as the armed forces rebel against the recently–elected leftist Popular Front government		1936
Irish–American aviator Douglas Corrigan flies from New York to Baldonnel Aerodrome, County Dublin. His flight plan was filed to return to Long Beach, California, from where he'd arrived in New York; he claimed he'd made a navigational error, but many believed he'd flown to Ireland intentionally. He was dubbed 'Wrong Way Corrigan' by the New York Post		1938
320 lives (mostly of African American sailors) are lost, and 390 are injured, in an explosion that occurs while munitions are being loaded onto ships bound for the Pacific theatre of World War II at Port Chicago, near San Francisco		1944
UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Harry S Truman, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin meet in the German city of Potsdam, near Berlin, to decide the future of Germany following the Allied victory in World War II		1945
Dublin's Abbey Theatre burns down		1951
The first Newport (Rhode Island) Jazz Festival begins		1954
Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California		1955
Anthropologist Mary Leakey finds the skull of a hominid now known as Australopithecus boisei at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania		1959
Donald Campbell reaches 429.3 mph in Bluebird at Lake Eyre, South Australia		1964
The Beatles cartoon film Yellow Submarine is premiered in London		1969
A bomb explodes in the Mortar Room at the Tower of London, killing one person and injuring 41, including wight children. No one is arrested and no group claims responsibility, although the IRA is widely suspected		1974
US Apollo 18 and Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft dock while in orbit 140 miles above Earth; commanders Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov shake hands through the hatches and exchange greetings in each other's language		1975
Indonesia annexes East Timor from Portugal (which had effectively abandoned it in previous years, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence in 1975)		1976
After being overthrown in an insurrection led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Nicaraguan dictator General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida		1979
The Humber Estuary Bridge opens		1981
114 lives are lost, and over 200 are injured, when a suspended walkway collapses in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri		1981
The USA's 'national drinking age' is raised from 18 to 21		1984
The High Court orders Thomas Ward, an Americal lawyer and former director of the brewing giant Guinness, to repay the company £5.2 million, having failed to disclose a transfer of funds to Guinness's directors during the £2.5bn takeover of drinks company Distillers Group last year. Six years later, the same court would clear him		1987
The USA's B–2 Stealth Bomber flies for the first time		1989
Relations between the Holy See and Poland are restored, after being broken off by the former in 1945		1989
All 230 people on board lose their lives when TWA flight 800 explodes mysteriously, shortly after take–off from J. F. Kennedy Airport, New York, bound for Rome via Charles de Gaulle (Paris). A report would conclude that the most likely cause of the explosion was the ignition of flammable fuel vapours by a short–circuit		1996
President Yeltsin offers a bow of repentance and national atonement to the remains of Tsar Nicholas II, newly interred in the Romanov vault in St. Petersburg		1998
Up to 2,700 lives are lost when a tidal wave strikes the north–west coast of Papua New Guinea		1998
The International Criminal Court is established by the Rome Statute thereof		1998
The body of Sarah Payne is found in a field approximately 15 miles from her grandparents' home (see 1 July)		2000
Tesco, having found a loophole in European legislation, resumes selling goods in pounds and ounces – after a survey revealed that nine out of ten of its customers think imperial when weighing their produce		2000
George Bush and Tony Blair are embarrassed when a private conversation (in which Bush spurns Blair's offer to go to the Middle East as a peacemaker, saying he would rather send his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) is accidentally broadcast during the G8 summit at St. Petersburg		2006
All 187 passengers and crew on board, and twelve people on the ground, lose their lives when an Airbus A320 crashes into a warehouse after landing too fast and missing the end of the runway at São Paulo–Congonhas Airport		2007
All 298 passengers and crew lose their lives when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (a Boeing 777) is shot down near the border between Ukraine and Russia		2014
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claims responsibility for a suicide car bombing at a marketplace in the Iraqi city of Khan Bani Saad, in which around 130 lives were lost		2015
Astronomers at the University of California, in Berkeley, discover twelve new satellites of Jupiter thanks to a "serendipitous" alignment with the area in which they are searching for a new planet, rumoured to orbit the Sun far beyond Pluto		2018

You are here:

On This Day: 17 July