Today in History July 17

1054 – Emperor Henry III crowns his son Henry IV king

1203 – Siege of Constantinople begins during the fourth Crusade, Crusaders aboad a Venetian fleet attack the city

1762 – Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III

1821 – Spain cedes Florida to US

1841 – British humor magazine “Punch” first published

Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term “cartoon” in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. It became a British institution, but after the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002.

1863 – Battle of Honey Springs – largest battle in Indian Territory

1951 – King Leopold III of Belgium gives up throne to son Boudouin I

1955 – Arco, Idaho becomes first US city lit by nuclear power

1959 – Dr Leakey discovers oldest human skull (600,000 years old)

In 1931, Louis Leakey found Olduvai fossils in Berlin and thought Olduvai Gorge held information on human origins, and thus began excavating there. Louis and MaryLeakey are the archaeologists responsible for most of the excavations and discoveries of the hominid fossils in Olduvai Gorge. Their finds, when added to the prior work of Raymond Dart and Robert Broom, convinced most paleoanthropologists that humans originally evolved in Africa.

	Mary Leakey

1967 – Monkees perform at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix is opening ac

1975 – Apollo 18 & Soyuz 19 make first US/USSR linkup in space

1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.

1998 – Russia buries Tsar Nicholas II & family,80 years after they died

2004 – Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months in prison plus five months in home confinement for lying to federal investigators

1763 – John Jacob Astor, Germany, richest man in US, banker/fur trader

1839 – Ephraim Shay, American inventor (d. 1916)

1898 – Berenice Abbott, Springfield Oh, photographer (World of Atget)

1899 – James Cagney, American actor (Yankee Doodle Dandy)

1920 – Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser (d. 2005)

1928 – Vince Guaraldi, American musician and composer (d. 1976)

1935 – Donald Sutherland, St John New Brunswick, Canadian actor

1954 – Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

1588 – Mimar Sinan, Ottoman architect and engineer, designed the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque and Süleymaniye Mosque (b. 1489)

1887 – Dorothea Dix, American nurse and activist (b. 1802)

1918 – Victims of the Shooting of the Romanov family

1995 – Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinian race car driver (b. 1911)

1996 – Victims of TWA Flight 800

2001 – Katharine Graham, American publisher (b. 1917)

2006 – Mickey Spillane, American crime novelist (b. 1918)

2009 – Walter Cronkite, American journalist and actor (b. 1916)

2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 victims