July 17
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Events on This Day
1845 - The New York Yacht Club hosted the first American boating regatta.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.
1866 - Authorization was given to build a tunnel beneath the Chicago River. The project was completed three years later at a cost of $512,709. The Washington Street traffic tunnel was in use until 1953.
1867 - Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA. It was the first university-based dental school in America.
1902 - Dr. Willis Carrier installed a commerical air conditioning system at a Brooklyn, NY printing plant. The system was the first to provide man-made control over temperature, humidity, ventilation and air quality. It was originally installed to help maintain quality at the printing plant and for the first two decades of the 20th Century, Carrier’s invention was used primarily to cool machines, not people. The development of the centrifugal chiller by Carrier in the early 1920s led to comfort cooling for movie theaters (remember the marquees with “It’s cool inside”?) and, before long, air conditioning came to department stores, office buildings and railroad cars. Cool...
1920 - Sinclair Lewis finished the now-famous novel, Main Street.
1938 - Douglas Corrigan, unemployed airplane mechanic, left Floyd Bennett Field in New York, supposedly headed for Los Angeles. He landed his 1929 Curtiss Robin monoplane about 28 hours later - not in California but in Ireland at Dublin's Baldonnel Airport. Corrigan made the 3,150-mile flight without benefit of a radio or navigational equipment other than a compass. His explanation for the monumental mistake was that he was following the wrong end of the compass needle. (Folks were never sure whether his feat was a mistake or moxie.) He was, however, welcomed home as a hero (ticker tape parade and all) and known forever more as ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan.
1939 - Charlie Barnet and his orchestra recorded Cherokee for Bluebird Records. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the horn of Billy May on the piece.
1941 - The hitting streak of Joe DiMaggio came to an end after 56 games. The Yankee slugger couldn’t get a hit. Since May 16th, he batted at an average of .408. He hit 19 homers during the streak. Two pitchers were responsible for putting the skids on DiMaggio’s hitting streak: Al Smith and Jim Bagby of the Cleveland Indians. After a day off, Joltin’ Joe resumed his hitting ways, in a shorter, but still impressive, 14-game streak.
1944 - The worst military loss of life (within the continental U.S.) in World War II occured. An explosion of an ammunition dump in Port Chicago, California (now Concord Naval Weapons Station), destroyed two ammunition ships, leveled much of the town, and killed 320 people.
1945 - U.S. President Harry S Truman, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. 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, Alabama, to endorse South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for the White House.
1951 - Prince Baudouin became the fifth King of the Belgians after his father Leopold III abdicated the throne.
1954 - The first Newport Jazz Festival was held on the grass tennis courts of the Newport Casino in Newport RI. Eddie Condon and his band played Muskrat Ramble as the opening number of the world’s first jazz fest.
1955 - Disneyland opened the gates to “The Happiest Place on Earth” in Anaheim, California. In the famous theme park’s first year of operation, some four million people visited Main Street USA, Fantasyland, Frontierland and Tomorrowland. On its opening day, Disneyland held a gala TV broadcast featuring Walt Disney, Bob Cummings, Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan.
1955 - Arco, Idaho, pop. 1,300, went into the atomic age as they became the first community in the world to receive all its light and power from atomic energy.
1959 - Mary Leakey, half of the husband and wife team of Dr. and Mrs. Louis Leakey, discovered the oldest known human skull -- in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Zinjanthropus boisei, as the skull was named, was later determined to be 1.75 million years old.
1961 - John Chancellor became the on-air host of the Today show on NBC-TV. Chancellor replaced Dave Garroway, who had resigned after 10 years of early morning duty on the popular program.
1961 - Ty Cobb died of cancer at age 74. Cobb was considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time.
1961 - Rocker Bobby Lewis was starting week #2 of a seven-week stay at number one (one, one, one) on the pop-music charts with his smash, Tossin’ and Turnin’. Lewis, who grew up in an orphanage, learned to play the piano at age 5. He became popular in the Detroit, MI area before moving on to fame and fortune with Beltone Records.
1968 - The Beatles’ feature-length cartoon, Yellow Submarine, premiered at the London Pavilion. The song, Yellow Submarine, had been a #2 hit for the supergroup (9/17/66) and was the inspiration for the movie.
1968 - A coup in Iraq returned the Baath Party to power, five years after it was ousted.
1975 - An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind as three American and two Soviet spacemen exchanged handshakes 140 miles above the Earth.
1979 - Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned and fled into exile in Miami, Florida.
1981 - Two skywalks suspended from the ceiling over the atrium lobby at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, MO collapsed, killing 114 people. Five years later, two design engineers were convicted for their gross negligence.
1981 - The Humber Bridge, billed at the time as the longest single-span bridge in the world (1.4 km), was opened in England by Queen Elizabeth II.
1986 - The largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history took place as LTV Corporation asked for court protection from more than 20,000 creditors. LTV Corp. had debts in excess of $4 billion.
1988 - Michael Dukakis arrived in Atlanta to claim the Democratic nomination for president, saying, “We’re working hard to make sure we have a good convention, a strong and united party.”
1989 - The B-2 stealth bomber was tested for the first time at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
1993 - Barbra Streisand’s Back to Broadway was the #1 album in the U.S. for one week. The album was among only a handful of recordings ever to become number one on the sales charts in their initial week of release and to go platinum through their first shipping orders.
1996 - TWA (Trans World Airlines) flight 800, carrying 230 people, including four cockpit crew members and 14 flight attendants, exploded, falling into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York. The Boeing 747 had lifted off from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport at 8:19 p.m. bound for Paris, France. The explosion happened about 26 minutes later, some 40 miles east of New York, as the plane was climbing through 13,800 feet. The victims included celebrities in sports, entertainment and the arts, business people, and vacationers. Possibly the most poignant were the deaths of sixteen teen-agers, all students from the Montoursville, PA high school French club, and their five chaperones. There are several theories as to the cause of the explosion. Some believe that the airliner was sabotaged and destroyed by a bomb planted on board. Others swore they knew the plane had been struck by a U.S. missile. But, after a 16-month probe, the FBI announced it had found no evidence of a criminal act or stray (or otherwise) missile. It concluded that the crash was caused by electrical arcing in the plane’s center fuel tank igniting fuel vapors.
1996 - Films opening in the U.S.: Kazaam, with Shaquille O’Neal, Francis Capra and Ally Walker; and Multiplicity, starring Michael Keaton, Andie Macdowell and Zack Duhame.
1997 - F.W. Woolworth Company announced it was closing its 400 remaining five-and-dime stores across the U.S., ending 117 years in business. Lower prices of goods in big discount stores and the fact that grocery stores carried most of the items that five-and-ten-cent stores featured were the big factors in the Woolworth downturn in the late 20th century.
1998 - Just after seven in the evening, the inhabitants of the West Sepik area of Papua New Guinea felt the tremors from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. Eye-witnesses reported that minutes later the villages were hit in quick succession by three tsunami (tidal waves) reaching heights of 14 meters (45 feet: taller than a four-story building), followed by two smaller waves. More than 2,000 people were killed and some 10,000 left homeless. In addition, many of the survivors were badly injured. Costas Synolakis, a researcher at UCLA and co-leader of a science team that visited PNG in early August 1998: “We were in a state of shock. It was really something we had not seen before. It was sort of a new threshold in terms of what a wave can do.”
1998 - The Mask of Zorro debuted in U.S. theatres. The “sweeping romantic adventure of love and honor, of tragedy” features Antonio Banderas (as Zorro), Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stuart Wilson and Matt Letscher.
2000 - An Alliance Air Boeing 737 jet with 58 people caught fire and crashed into two homes while approaching Patna airport in India. 56 people were killed.
2001 - Katharine Graham, the 84-year-old chairman of the executive committee of the Washington Post Co., died. Graham had suffered a head injury in a fall July 14 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
2002 - Eight Legged Freaks opened in the U.S. The horror, action, comedy stars David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scott Terra, Doug E. Doug and Scarlett Johansson.
2003 - The U.S. combat death toll in Iraq hit a milestone as the Pentagon acknowledged its casualties from hostile fire had reached 147, the same number of troops who died at enemy hands in the first Gulf War. General John Abizaid, head of central command, said loyalists were fighting an increasingly organized “guerrilla-type campaign.”
2004 - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger mockingly used the term “girlie men” during a rally as he claimed Democrats were delaying the state budget by catering to special interests.
2005 - Former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath died at his Salisbury home at the age of 89.
2005 - Disneyland celebrated its 50th Anniversary in Anaheim, CA.
2006 - American mystery writer Mickey Spillane died in South Carolina. He was 88 years old. Spillane’s 13 Mike Hammer novels began with I, the Jury (1946) and ended with Black Alley in 1996. Several of his books were made into films, including The Girl Hunters (1963), in which he played the starring role.
2007 - Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia. Three others were indicted, along with Vick, on charges related to competitive dog fighting. (In December, Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for his role in the conspiracy involving gambling and the killing of pit bulls.)
2008 - A Russian government audit revealed that up to 50,000 pieces were missing from the country’s museums; everything from Pre-Revolutionary medals and weapons to precious works of art.
2008 - Kay Ryan of Fairfax, CA was selected to be the 16th poet laureate of the U.S., picked by James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress.
2008 - California became the first U.S. state to approve ‘green’ building standards.
2009 - New movies in the U.S.: (500) Days of Summer, with Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Rachel Boston, Matthew Gray Gubler and Chloe Moretz; and Homecoming, starring Mischa Barton, Matt Long, Jessica Stroup and Michael Landes.
2009 - Suicide attacks at the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia killed 9 people, including two of the bombers, and wounded 53. In 2010, a Jakarta court found Amid Abdillah guilty of helping plan the bombings. The same court earlier sentenced Saefudin Zuhri to eight years in prison for helping with the attacks.
2009 - Legendary newsman Walter Cronkite died at his Manhattan home after a long illness. He was 92 years old. Cronkite replaced Douglas Edwards as anchor of the CBS Evening News. on April 16, 1962. Polls in 1970s had pronounced Cronkite the "most trusted man in America."
2010 - Hong Kong adopted its first minimum wage law. It took effect May 1, 2011 and set the minimum wage at HK$28 (about US$3.60).
2013 - The animated Turbo (“He’s Fast. They’re Furious.”) opened in U.S. theatres on this day. The story of an everyday garden snail achieving his biggest dream, winning the Indy 500, features the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Michael Peña, Luis Guzmán, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Ken Jeong, Michelle Rodriguez, Maya Rudolph, Ben Schwartz, Kurtwood Smith, Snoop Dogg and Samuel L. Jackson.
2013 - Great Britain legalized gay marriage after Queen Elizabeth II gave her royal stamp of approval, clearing the way for the first same-sex weddings.
2014 - Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 with 298 people on board was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Officials strongly suspected the Boeing 777 was downed by a missile fired by Ukrainian separatists backed by Moscow. More than half of the dead passengers, 189 people, were Dutch. Twenty-nine were Malaysian, 27 Australian, 12 Indonesian, 9 British, 4 German, 4 Belgian, 3 Filipino, one Canadian, one New Zealand and 4 as yet unidentified. All 15 crew were Malaysian. (In June 2019 a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said it was issuing national and international arrest warrants for four suspects. Three Russians, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Oleg Pulatov, were named, along with Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko.)
2015 - New movies in U.S. theatres included: Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Hayley Atwell; Trainwreck, with Amy Schumer, Bill Hader and Brie Larson; Irrational Man, starring Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix and Parker Posey; the documentary, The Look of Silence; Mr. Holmes, with Ian McKellen, Laura Linney and Hiroyuki Sanada; Safelight, starring Evan Peters, Juno Temple and Kevin Alejandro; and The Stanford Prison Experiment, with Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan and Billy Crudup.
2015 - A fast-moving wildfire swept across a freeway through Cajon Pass in Southern California. Some 30 vehicles were destroyed or damaged and Interstate 15, the main freeway from Los Angeles to Las Vegas was closed.
2016 - Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said his foundation would invest another $5 billion in Africa over five years. Gates delivered the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture ahead of Mandela Day, when South Africans are encouraged to donate 67 minutes of their time to help others. Gates said the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had already invested more than $9 billion in Africa with health being a major focus.
2016 - A lone gunman killed three law enforcement officers and wounded three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana less than two weeks after the death of an African American man at the hands of Baton Rouge police. The shootings occurred as police responded to a 911 call that a man dressed in black and armed with what appeared to be an assault-style rifle was walking near a shopping plaza about a mile from police headquarters. The gunman, who was shot and killed during the exchange of gunfire, was later identified as Gavin Long, an African American resident of Kansas City, Mo., who turned 29 on Sunday and was in Baton Rouge celebrating his birthday, according to relatives. In the spring of 2012, Long was named to the dean’s list at the University of Alabama, which he attended for one semester, university officials said.
2017 - A court in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) ruled that a Lithuanian accused of swindling Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million through an email fraud scheme must be extradited to the United States to stand trial. Evaldas Rimasauskas was flown to the New York City area. The Vilnius native faces charges of wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft.
2018 - Britain’s United Utilities announced a temporary ban on using garden hoses or sprinklers for watering gardens and washing cars. Dry weather continued to affect millions of customers in north-west of England.
2018 - The European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay €20,000 ($23,442) in damages to relatives of murdered investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, saying Russia had failed to carry out an effective investigation into her killing.
2018 - Former U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech in South Africa to mark the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. Obama made clear the world was at a crossroads between Mandela’s vision of tolerance and the current “disturbed” times.
2019 - A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York sentenced Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman (62) to life in prison plus 30 years. This, for leading Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. The life sentence was mandatory, but U.S. prosecutors had asked for the three decades added onto Guzmán's punishment. The sentence also included a multibillion-dollar financial penalty for the wealthy drug dealer. Guzmán, 62, was extradited from his native Mexico to the U.S. in January 2017. The terms of his extradition included a pledge that U.S. authorities would not seek the death penalty.
2019 - New York’s notorious Gambino family and mafia dons in Sicily were targeted in a series of raids carried out by more than 200 officers from the FBI and the Italian police. Thomas Gambino, considered by the FBI to be a significant member of the New York-based crime family, was among those taken into custody in Palermo.
2020 - Films scheduled to open on this day (many theatres were still closed by the Covid-19 pandemic) included: Saint Maud, starring Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle and Lily Knight; Ghosts of War, with Brenton Thwaites, Theo Rossi and Kyle Gallner; My Brothers’ Crossing, starring Daniel Roebuck, James Black and Paul Ben-Victor; A Nice Girl Like You, with Lucy Hale, Mindy Cohn and Jackie Cruz; and The Sunlit Night, starring Jessica Hecht, Jenny Slate and Gillian Anderson.
2020 - Georgia Congressman John Lewis -- an icon of the civil rights movement, and, for decades, a force in Democratic politics -- died at age 80. Former President Barack Obama said that Lewis was one of his heroes and that the congressman “risked his life and his blood” for his country and “inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”
2020 - Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler demanded that POTUS Trump remove militarized federal agents deployed to the city. Democratic members of Oregon’s congressional delegation demanded an investigation into why Trump ordered the officers to Portland, where local leaders said their presence outside federal buildings only inflamed tensions during nightly protests.
2020 - India became the third country to record one million coronavirus cases, joining Brazil and the United States. A surge of some 35,000 cases in 24 hours took the confirmed total to 1,003,832. A record 687 deaths sent that total to 25,602.
2020 - Russian drugmaker R-Pharm said it had signed a deal with AstraZeneca for it to manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by the British pharmaceuticals giant and Oxford University.
2021 - Some 133 people had died in flooding in Germany, including some 90 people in the Ahrweiler district south of Cologne. Hundreds of people remained missing.
2021 - 39-year-old Britney Spears said she would not perform again as long as her father retained control over her career. Jamie Spears had sole control of his daughter’s $60 million estate under a court-appointed conservatorship that he set up in 2008. (The conservatorship was ended in November 2021.)
2022 - The 150th British Open at St. Andrews wound up with Cameron Smith of Australia winning his first major title -- by 1 stroke -- over Cameron Young of the U.S. Irish favorite Rory McIlroy was another stroke back in third place.
2022 - Expanded use of drop boxes for mailed ballots did not cause any problems during the 2020 election -- in states controlled by either party. This, according to an Associated Press survey of state election officials. The survey found no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft that could have affected election results. The findings contradicted allegations of fraud that Republicans had used in some states to eliminate or roll back the use of drop boxes.
2023 - Russia pulled out of a deal that allowed the exporting of Ukrainian grain past the naval blockade Russia had in place. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a significant increase in global food prices. Grain prices were sharply higher. All of this because of Putin’s fear that Ukrain was leaning too far West -- and his mistaken notion that a Russian takeover would be easy.
2023 - High temperatures were being reported around the world, breaking records on multiple continents. In the U.S., swaths of the country were in the triple digits. Alerts for dangerous heat were issued in parts of Arizona, including Phoenix, which tied the record streak with 18 consecutive days over 110 degrees. Similarly, hot air over southern Europe has turned Italy into a “giant pizza oven,” a climate expert said. A total of 20 Italian cities saw people facing a very high health risk due to the intense heat wave.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day July 17
1744 - Elbridge Gerry
politician: 5th vice president of the U.S. [1813-1814]; governor of Massachusetts: wrote a redistricting bill, hence the origin of the word ‘gerrymandering’; died Nov 23, 18141763 - John Jacob Astor
fur tycoon: American Fur Company; died Mar 29, 18481859 - Luis Muñoz Rivera
Puerto Rican patriot; poet; journalist; died Nov 15, 19161889 - Erle Stanley Gardner (A.A. Fair)
novelist: Perry Mason; died Mar 11, 19701898 - Berenice Abbott
photographer: 1930s B/W photos of NYC: Changing New York; died Dec 9, 19911899 - 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, 19861905 - William Gargan
actor: Dynamite, The Canterville Ghost, Rain; died Feb 16, 19791912 - Art Linkletter (Arthur Gordon Kelly)
TV host: House Party, Kids Say the Darnedest Things; died May 26, 20101914 - Eleanor Steber
soprano: internationally acclaimed Metropolitan Opera diva, appeared in 50 different leading operatic roles, heard in more premiers at the Met than any other artist; died Oct 3, 19901917 - Lou Boudreau
Baseball Hall of Famer: Cleveland Indians shortstop [all-star: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948/World Series/Baseball Writer’s Award: 1948]; player, manager: Boston Red Sox; manager: KC Athletics; sportscaster: Chicago Cubs; died Aug 10, 20011917 - Phyllis Diller (Driver)
comedienne: The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, actress: Boy Did I Get the Wrong Number; died Aug 20, 20121929 - Roy (David) McMillan
baseball: shortstop: Cincinnati Reds, Cincinnati Redlegs [all-star: 1956, 1957], Milwaukee Braves, NY Mets; died Nov 2, 19971932 - Bob Leonard
basketball: All-American: Indiana University; coach: Indiana Pacers [Bobby ‘Slick’ Leonard]; died Apr 13, 20211933 - Mimi Hines
pop singer, actress: duo: Ford & Hines [w/husband, Phil Ford]; Broadway singer, actress: Funny Girl, Grease1935 - Diahann Carroll (Carol Diahann Johnson)
actress: Claudine, Julia, Dynasty, The Five Heartbeats; died Oct 4, 20191935 - Donald Sutherland
actor: Dirty Sexy Money, JFK, Klute, Backdraft, M*A*S*H, The Dirty Dozen, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Outbreak, Commander in Chief; died Jun 20, 20241940 - Tim Brooke-Taylor
comic actor: The Goodies, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again, Under the Bed, Monty Python Meets Beyond the Fringe, The Case, Goodies Rule - O.K.?; writer: London, How to Irritate People; died Apr 12, 20201941 - Daryle Lamonica
football [quarterback]: NFL: Buffalo Bills [1963–1966]; Oakland Raiders [1967-1974]: 1968 Super Bowl II; died Apr 21, 20221942 - Spencer Davis
musician: group: Spencer Davis Group: Keep on Runnin’, Somebody Help Me, Gimme Some Lovin’, I’m a Man1942 - Gale Garnett
Grammy Award-winning singer: We’ll Sing in the Sunshine [1964]; actress: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean, The Park is Mine, The Children, Happy Mother’s Day, Love George1942 - Connie (Cornelius) Hawkins
Basketball Hall of Famer: Pittsburgh Rens, Harlem Globetrotters, Pittsburgh Pipers, LA Lakers, Atlanta Hawks, Phoenix Suns [Suns jersey retired jersey retired Nov 19, 1976]1942 - Don (Donald Eulon) Kessinger
baseball: shortstop: Chicago Cubs [all-star: 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974], SL Cardinals, Chicago White Sox1947 - Camilla Parker Bowles
Duchess of Cornwall: second wife of Prince Charles of Wales, the eldest child and heir apparent of Queen Elizabeth II1947 - Mick Tucker
musician: drums: group: The Sweet: Funny Funny, Co-Co, Little Willy, Wig Wam Bam, Blockbuster, Hell Raiser, Ballroom Blitz, Teenage Rampage, Fox on the Run; died Feb 14, 20021948 - Cathy Ferguson
swimming: U.S. Olympic gold medalist [Tokyo - 1964]: women’s 100-meter backstroke, women’s 400-meter medley relay w/Cynthia Goyette, Sharon Stouder, Kathleen Ellis1948 - Brian Glascock
musician: drums: group: The Motels: Only the Lonely, Danger, Celia, Shame, Careful, Suddenly Last Summer, So L.A.; also played with the Bee Gees, Joan Armatrading, Iggy Pop1949 - Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musican: bass, lyricist: group: Black Sabbath: Wizard, Evil Woman, Paranoid, Iron Man, Electric Funeral, After Forever; more1949 - Lon Hinkle
golf: champ: World Series of Golf [1979]1950 - Phoebe Snow (Laub)
singer: Poetry Man, Gone at Last; died Apr 26, 20111950 - P.J. (Pamela Jane) Soles
actress: Carrie, Rock ’n’ Roll High School, Private Benjamin, Stripes, The Power Within1951 - Lucie Arnaz
actress: They’re Playing Our Song, Here’s Lucy; Emmy Award-winning producer [w/Laurence Luckinbill]: Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie [1992-93]; Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’ daughter1952 - David Hasselhoff
actor: Bay Watch, Knight Rider, The Young and the Restless; TV talent-show judge: America’s Got Talent; more1952 - Nicolette Larson
singer: Lotta Love; died Dec 16, 19971953 - Mike Thomas
football: Washington Redskins RB [Offensive Rookie of the Year: 1975]1954 - Angela Merkel
Chancellor of Germany [2005-2021], Leader of the Christian Democratic Union [CDU] 2000-2018: first woman to hold either office1960 - Mark Burnett
Emmy Award-winning producer: Survivor [2000]; On the Lot, Rock Star: INXS, The Apprentice, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart
1960 - Karen Price
model: Playboy Miss January 1981; stuntwoman: Twin Sitters, Old Gringo, Less Than Zero, The Running Man1960 - Robin Shou
actor: Mortal Kombat, Beverly Hills Ninja, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation1963 - Paul Hipp
actor: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Lethal Weapon 3, The Chippendales Murder1963 - Bobby (Robert Thomas) Thigpen
baseball: pitcher: Chicago White Sox [all-star: 1990/record for saves: 57 in one season: 1990], Philadelphia Phillies [World Series: 1993], Seattle Mariners1964 - Brandy Alexandre
actress: X-rated films: Twin Peeks, Whore of the Roses, Girls and Guns, Bikini City, Bare Essence, Search for an Angel, Showdown, Honey I Blew Everybody1964 - Craig Morgan
singer: That’s What I Love About Sunday, Redneck Yacht Club, Bonfire, Almost Home, Little Bit of Life, Love Remembers, International Harvester1965 - Alex Winter
actor: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure1968 - Jane Hazlegrove
actress: Casualty, Families, London’s Burning, Coronation Street, Jonathan Creek, The Bill, Doctors, Holby City, You Can’t Be Too Careful, Shooting Stars, Who’s Our Little Jenny Lind, Buried1968 - Beth Littleford
comedian, actress: The Daily Show [1996-2000], I’m in the Band, The Hard Times of RJ Berger, Dog with a Blog, Starstruck, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Music High, Kidnap Party, Movie 43, It’s Not You, It’s Me1969 - Jason Clarke
actor: Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless, The Great Gatsby, The Human Contract, Death Race, Public Enemies, Rabbit-Proof Fence, White House Down, The Better Angels, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes1971 - Calbert Cheaney
basketball: Univ of Indiana; NBA: Washington Wizards, Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Utah Jazz, Golden State Warriors1971 - Cory Doctorow
journalist, science fiction author: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, For The Win; co-editor of weblog bOING bOING1972 - Eric Williams
basketball: Univ of Providence, Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Cleveland Cavaliers, NJ Nets, Toronto Raptors1973 - Jerry Wilson
football: Southern University; NFL: Miami Dolphins, NO Saints, SD Chargers1976 - Luke Bryan
singer: Rain Is a Good Thing, Someone Else Calling You Baby, I Don’t Want This Night to End, Drunk on You, Do I, All My Friends Say, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, Crash My Party1976 - Eric Winter
actor: The Rookie, The Mentalist, Witches of East End, Rosewood, Comet, Dead End, Finding Santa, Taste of Summer1978 - Michael Fredo
singer, songwriter: Popstar Lovelife, Love all Over Again, This Time Around, As Long As I Live, I Would Do Anything, Now You’re Gone1978 - Jason Jennings
baseball [pitcher]: Baylor Univ; Colorado Rockies1979 - Mike Vogel
actor: Miami Medical, Cloverfield, Heaven’s Rain, Open Graves, Poseidon, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Grind, Grounded for Life1980 - Ryan Miller
hockey [goaltender]: NHL: Buffalo Sabres [2010 Vezina Trophy winner]; starting goaltender and MVP of U.S. hockey team [silver medal] in 2010 Winter Olympics [Vancouver, BC]1983 - Sarah Jones
actress: Vegas, Alcatraz, Murder 101: College Can Be Murder, Ugly Betty, Big Love, Still Green, The Blue Hour, Dead*Line, Red & Blue Marbles, 2ND Take1986 - Brando Eaton
actor: Dexter, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Zoey 1011987 - Stevie Brown
football [safety]: Univ of Michigan; NFL: Oakland Raiders [2010]; Carolina Panthers [2011]; Indianapolis Colts [2011]; New York Giants [2012–2014]
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day July 17
1952I’m Yours (facts) - Eddie Fisher
Kiss of Fire (facts) - Georgia Gibbs
1961
1970
1979
1988
1997
2006
2015
and even more...
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...
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