July 17
1212 - The Moslems were crushed in the Spanish crusade.
1453 - France defeated England at Castillon, France, which ended the 100 Years' War.
1785 - France limited the importation of goods from Britain.
1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to the British at Rochefort, France.
1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.
1862 - National cemeteries were authorized by the U.S. government.
1866 - Authorization was given to build a tunnel beneath the Chicago River. The three-year project cost $512,709.
1867 - Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA. It was the first dental school in the U.S.
1898 - U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter took Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1917 - The British royal family adopted the Windsor name.
1920 - Sinclair Lewis finished his novel "Main Street."
1941 - The longest hitting streak in baseball history ended when the Cleveland Indians pitchers held New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio hitless for the first time in 57 games.
1941 - Brigadier General Soervell directed Architect G. Edwin Bergstrom to have basic plans and architectural perspectives for an office building that could house 40,000 War Department employees on his desk by the following Monday morning. The building became known as the Pentagon.
1945 - U.S. President 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. During the meeting Stalin made the comment that "Hitler had escaped."
1946 - Chinese communists opened a drive against the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
1950 - The television show "The Colgate Comedy Hour" debuted featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
1954 - The Brooklyn Dodgers made history as the first team with a majority of black players.
1955 - Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA.
1960 - Francis Gary Powers pled guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
1966 - Ho Chi Minh ordered a partial mobilization of North Vietnam forces to defend against American air strikes.
1975 - An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit. It was the first link up between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
1979 - Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled to Miami, FL, in exile.
1986 - The largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history took place when LTV Corporation asked for court protection from more than 20,000 creditors. LTV Corp. had debts in excess of $4 billion.
1987 - Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and rear Admiral John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress at the "Iran-Contra" hearings.
1995 - The Nasdaq composite stock index rose above 1,000 for the first time.
1997 - After 117 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 stores.
1998 - Biologists reported that they had deciphered the genome (genetic map) of the syphilis bacterium.
2008 - In China, construction of the Shanghai World Financial Center was completed.
