Today in History

Today is Wednesday, July 17, the 199th day of 2024. There are 167 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California after its $17 million, year-long construction; the park drew a million visitors in its first 10 weeks.

Also on this date:

In 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.

In 1902, Willis Carrier produced a set of designs for what would become the world’s first modern air-conditioning system.

In 1918, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.

In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic.

In 1944, during World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, were killed when a pair of ammunition ships exploded at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.

In 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.

In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.

In 1981, 114 people were killed when a pair of suspended walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a tea dance.

In 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.

In 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.

In 2020, civil rights icon John Lewis, whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, died at age 80.

In 2022, a report said nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting that left 21 people dead at a Texas elementary school, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in a chaotic scene that lasted more than an hour before the gunman was finally confronted and killed.

Today’s Birthdays: Sportscaster Verne Lundquist is 84. Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom is 77. Rock musician Terry “Geezer” Butler is 75. Actor Lucie Arnaz is 73. Actor David Hasselhoff is 72. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is 70. Film director Wong Kar-wai is 66. Television producer Mark Burnett is 64. Singer Regina Belle is 61. Country music artist Craig Morgan is 60. Rock musician Lou Barlow is 58. Actor Bitty Schram (TV: “Monk”) is 56. Actor Jason Clarke is 55. Movie director F. Gary Gray is 55. Country singer Luke Bryan is 48. Film director/screenwriter Justine Triet is 46. R&B singer Jeremih (jehr-uh-MY’) is 37. Actor Billie Lourd is 32. NHL center Connor Bedard is 19.