Sunday, July 17

This Day In History

• 1821   Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
• 1862   National cemeteries were authorized by the U.S. government on this day. Arlington National Cemetery, located just outside Washington, D.C. in Virginia, is one of the most honored in the country. In addition to those who died in battle, other war veterans, including U.S. Presidents and government leaders, are buried there. Arlington National Cemetery also houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in honor of those who lay unidentified on the battlefields of freedom.
• 1867   Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA. It was the first dental school in America.
• 1898   Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrendered to U.S. forces during the Spanish-American War.
• 1917   With the country at war with Germany, the British royal family changed its name from the German Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor.
• 1938   Aviator Douglas Corrigan took off from New York, saying he was headed for California. He ended up in Ireland, earning the nickname ''Wrong Way Corrigan.''
• 1944   A pair of ammunition ships exploded in Port Chicago, Calif., killing 322 people.
• 1945   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.
• 1948   Southern Democrats opposed to the nomination of President Harry S. Truman met in Birmingham, Ala., to endorse South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond.
• 1955   Disneyland opened in Anaheim, Calif.
• 1961   Baseball hall-of-famer Ty Cobb died at age 74.
• 1979   Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled into exile in Miami.
• 1981   A pair of walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a dance, killing 114 people.
• 1996   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.
• 1997   Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 five-and-dime stores, laying off 9,200 employees.
• 1998   Nicholas II, the last of the Romanov czars, was buried in Russia   80 years after he and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.
• 2000   Bashar Assad, son of Hafez Assad, became Syria's 16th head of state.

Happy Birthday To

• 1889   Erle Stanley Gardner (A.A. Fair) (novelist: Perry Mason; died Mar 11, 1970)
• 1899   James Cagney (James Francis Cagney, Jr.) (Academy Award-winning actor: Yankee Doodle Dandy [1942]; Mr. Roberts, The Seven Little Foys, Man of a Thousand Faces; died Mar 30, 1986)
• 1912   Art Linkletter (Arthur Gordon Kelly) (TV host: House Party, Kids Say the Darnedest Things)
• 1935   Donald Sutherland (actor)