TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, July 17, the 198th day of 2018. There are 167 days left in the year.

1429 Hundred Years’ War: Charles VII of France is crowned the King of France in the Reims Cathedral after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc

1453 Battle of Castillon: The last battle of Hundred Years’ War, the French under Jean Bureau defeat the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who is killed in the battle in Gascony.

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.

1771 Bloody Falls massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.

1867 Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the first dental school in the U. S. that is affiliated with a university.

1902 Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.

1917 King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor.

1918 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are executed by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

1945 World War II: The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.

1955 Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.

1973 King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan, while having surgery in Italy, is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan.

1976 East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.

1979 Nicaraguan dictator General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida, United States.

1989 Holy See– Poland relations are restored.

2001 Concorde is brought back into service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash.

2006 The 7.7 Mw Pangandaran tsunami earthquake severely affects the Indonesian island of Java, killing 668 people, and leaving more than 9,000 injured.

2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed.

2015 120 people are killed in a suicide bombing in Diyala, Iraq.