TODAY IN HISTORY - JULY 17TH

1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people.

1899 – James Cagney, American actor and dancer (d. 1986) is born.

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

1912 – Art Linkletter, Canadian-American radio and television host (d. 2010) is born.

1917 – Lou Boudreau, American baseball player and manager (d. 2001) is born.

1917 – Phyllis Diller, American actress, singer, dancer, and voice artist (d. 2012) is born.

1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five lives are lost.

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

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (b. 1901)

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia (b. 1899)

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (b. 1895)

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia (b. 1897)

Alexandra Fyodorovna of Russia (b. 1872)

Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia (b. 1904)

Nicholas II of Russia (b. 1868)

1938 – Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and becomes known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.

1944 – Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war explode in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.

1953 – The largest number of United States midshipman casualties in a single event results from an aircraft crash in Florida killing 44.

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

1961 – Ty Cobb, American baseball player and manager (b. 1886) dies.

1975 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1981 – A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.

1984 – The national drinking age in the United States was changed from 18 to 21.

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

2001 – Concorde is brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash.

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

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

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.