Destined to make a fortune from the furs of the American West, John Jacob Astor is born in modest circumstances in the small German village of Waldorf. Although the number of foreign immigrants to the U.S. who succeeded in striking it rich is often exaggerated in the popular mind, Astor’s brilliant success demonstrates that “rags […]

Nils Bohlin, the Swedish engineer and inventor responsible for the three-point lap and shoulder seatbelt—considered one of the most important innovations in automobile safety—is born on July 17, 1920 in Härnösand, Sweden. Before 1959, only two-point lap belts were available in automobiles; for the most part, the only people who regularly buckled up were race […]

Douglas Corrigan, the last of the early glory-seeking fliers, takes off from Floyd Bennett field in Brooklyn, New York, on a flight that would finally win him a place in aviation history. Eleven years earlier, American Charles A. Lindbergh had become an international celebrity with his solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Corrigan was among […]

On July 17, 1941, New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio fails to get a hit against the Cleveland Guardians (then known as the Cleveland Indians), ending his historic 56-game hitting streak. The record run had captivated the country for two months. Joseph Paul DiMaggio was born November 25, 1914, in Martinez, California. In 1891, his […]

On July 17, 1945, President Harry S. Truman records his first impressions of Stalin in his diary. Truman described his initial meeting with the intimidating Soviet leader as cordial. “Promptly a few minutes before twelve” the president wrote, “I looked up from the desk and there stood Stalin in the doorway. I got to my […]

On July 17, 1967, one of the oddest musical pairings in history comes to an end when Jimi Hendrix dropped out as the opening act for teenybopper sensations The Monkees. The booking of psychedelic rock god Jimi Hendrix with the made-for-television Monkees was the brainchild of Hendrix’s manager, Mike Jeffery, who was seeking greater public […]

As part of a mission aimed at developing space rescue capability, the U.S. spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 rendezvous and dock in space. As the hatch was opened between the two vessels, commanders Thomas P. Stafford and Aleksei Leonov shook hands and exchanged gifts in celebration of the first such meeting […]

Shortly after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner bound for Paris explodes over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. Flight 800 had just received clearance to initiate a climb to cruise altitude when it exploded without warning. Because the plane was loaded with fuel for the long […]

On July 17, halfway through a flight from Amsterdam to Malaysia, a passenger plane was shot down in Eastern Ukraine, near the war-torn border with Russia. All 298 people on board, most of whom were citizens of the Netherlands, died in the explosion. It was the second Malaysian Air flight to disappear in 2014, after […]

On July 17, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and a time of unparalleled racial tensions in the United States, the nation loses one of the last towering figures of the civil rights movement. John Lewis, former Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for […]