This Date in History, July 17, 2017

''Knowing the past, we can make wise

choices for a brighter, and more positive future.''

1453		France defeats England at Castillon, France, ending the Hundred Years' War.
1762		Peter III of Russia is murdered and his wife, Catherine II, takes the throne.
1785		France limits the importation of goods from Britain.
1791		National Guard troops open fire on a crowd of demonstrators in Paris.
1799		Ottoman forces, supported by the British, capture Aboukir, Egypt from the French.
1801		The U.S. fleet arrives in Tripoli.
1815		Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders to the British at Rochefort, France.
1821		Andrew Jackson becomes the governor of Florida.
1864		Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaces General Joseph E. Johnston with General John Bell Hood in hopes of defeating Union General William T. Sherman outside Atlanta.
1898		U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter take Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1944		Field Marshall Erwin Rommel is wounded when an Allied fighter strafes his staff car in France.
1946		Chinese communists attack the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
1960		American pilot Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court.
1966		Ho Chi Minh orders a partial mobilization of North Vietnam to defend against American airstrikes.
1987		Lt. Col. Oliver North and Rear Adm. John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal.
Born on July 17
1674		Isaac Watts, English minister and hymn writer.
1763		John Jacob Astor, American fur trader and entrepreneur.
1888		S.Y. Agnon, Israeli writer (The Day Before Yesterday).
1889		Erle Stanley Gardner, detective writer, creator of Perry Mason.
1894		Georges Lemaitre, Belgian astronomer.
1898		Bernice Abbott, photographer.
1899		James Cagney, American actor (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mister Roberts).
1902		Christina E. Stead, novelist and screenwriter.
1912		Art Linkletter, radio and television personality.
1922		Donald Davie, English poet and literary critic.
1923		James Purdy, writer (Cabot Wright Begins).
1925		Laszlo Nagy, Hungarian poet.
1935		Peter Schickele, composer, creator of P.D.Q. Bach.

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