Historical Events on this Day in History - per Wikipedia

July 17

• 180 – Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
• 1203 – The Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople by assault. The Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus flees from his capital into exile.
• 1402 – Zhu Di, better known by his era name as the Yongle Emperor, assumes the throne over the Ming Dynasty of China.
• 1453 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Castillon: The French under Jean Bureau defeat the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who is killed in the battle in Gascony.
• 1586 – A meeting takes place at Lüneburg between several Protestant powers in order to discuss the formation of an 'evangelical' league of defence, called the 'Confederatio Militiae Evangelicae', against the Catholic League.
• 1717 – King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music is premiered.
• 1762 – Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.
• 1771 – Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, travelling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
• 1791 – Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.
• 1794 – The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.
• 1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people.
• 1867 – Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston. It was the first dental school in the U.S.
• 1899 – NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.
• 1917 – King George V of the United Kingdom issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family will bear the surname Windsor.
• 1918 – On the orders of the Bolshevik Party carried out by Cheka, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
• 1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; 5 lives are lost.
• 1933 – After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.
• 1936 – Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the civil war.
• 1938 – Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and becomes known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.
• 1944 – Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war explode in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.
• 1944 – World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near St. Lô, France.
• 1948 – The South Korean constitution is proclaimed.
• 1955 – Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.
• 1962 – Nuclear weapons testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site.
• 1968 – A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba'ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
• 1973 – King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.
• 1975 – Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: 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.
• 1976 – History of East Timor: East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.
• 1976 – The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team.
• 1979 – Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida.
• 1981 – The opening of the Humber Bridge by HM The Queen in England.
• 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.
• 1989 – First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
• 1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
• 1998 – Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.
• 1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
• 2007 – TAM Airlines (TAM Linhas Aéreas) Flight 3054 crashes upon landing during rain in São Paulo. This is Brazil's deadliest aviation accident to date with an estimated 199 deaths.
• 2009 – Jakarta double bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotels killed 9 people including 4 foreigners.