Updated
July 17, 2014,
9:28 am
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On July 17, 1975, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower linkup of its kind.
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On July 17, 1899, James Cagney, the Academy-Award winning American film actor, was born. Following his death on March 30, 1986, his obituary appeared in The Times.
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Other birthdays »
1821
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Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
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1898
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Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrendered to U.S. forces during the Spanish-American War.
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1917
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With the country at war with Germany, the British royal family changed its name from the German Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor.
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1918
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Russia's Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children were executed by the Bolsheviks.
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1945
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President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II.
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1948
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Southern Democrats opposed to the party's position on civil rights met in Birmingham, Ala., to endorse South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond for president.
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1955
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Disneyland opened in Anaheim, Calif.
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1961
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Baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb died at age 74.
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1967
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Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane died at age 40.
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1981
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A pair of walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a dance, killing 114 people.
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1996
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TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 bound for Paris, exploded and crashed off Long Island, N.Y., shortly after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport. All 230 people aboard were killed.
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2000
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Bashar Assad succeeded his late father, Hafez Assad, becoming Syria's 16th head of state.
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2009
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Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died at age 92.
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Historic Birthdays
James Cagney
7/17/1899 - 3/30/1986
American motion-picture actor.
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73
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William Gargan 7/17/1905 - 2/16/1979
American motion-picture and television actor
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71
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Georges Lemaitre 7/17/1894 - 6/20/1966
Belgian astronomer and cosmologist
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80
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Erle Stanley Gardner 7/17/1889 - 3/11/1970
American mystery novelist and lawyer
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81
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S. Y. Agnon 7/17/1888 - 2/17/1970
Israeli novelist and short-story writer
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86
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Ernest Rhys 7/17/1859 - 5/25/1946
English editor
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90
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Sir Erskine Holland 7/17/1835 - 5/24/1926
English legal scholar
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84
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John Jacob Astor 7/17/1763 - 3/29/1848
German-born American founder of the Astor dynasty
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70
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Elbridge Gerry 7/17/1744 - 11/23/1814
American Revolutionary leader and U.S. vice president (1813-14)
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47
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Alexander Baumgarten 7/17/1714 - 5/26/1762
German philosopher and educator
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