Today is Saturday, July 17, the 198th day of 2010. There are 167 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On July 17, 1918, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.
ON THIS DATE
In 1821, Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic.
In 1935, the entertainment trade publication Variety ran its legendary headline, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix” (which might be translated as, “Rural audiences reject rural-themed movies”).
In 1944, during World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, were killed when a pair of ammunition ships exploded at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.
In 1959, influential jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, known to her fans as “Lady Day,” died in a New York City hospital at age 44.
In 1968, a coup in Iraq returned the Baath Party to power, five years after it was ousted.
In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.
Associated Press
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