Today it’s Saturday July 17th the 198th day of 2021. There are 167 days left in the year.

Highlight in history:

On July 17, 1975, an Apollo spacecraft docked with a orbiting Soyuz spacecraft in the first such superpower link.

To this date :

In 1821, Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

In 1862, during the Civil War, Congress approved the Second Confiscation Act, which declared that all slaves taking refuge behind Union lines should be freed.

In 1918 Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.

In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when generals in the right-wing army launched an attempted coup against the Second Spanish Republic.

In 1944, during World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of whom were African Americans, were killed when a pair of munitions ships exploded at Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.

In 1945, after the surrender of Nazi Germany, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began to meet in Potsdam during the last Allied summit of WWII. .

In 1962, the United States conducted its last atmospheric nuclear test to date, detonating a 20 kiloton device, named Little Feller I, at the Nevada test site.

In 1967, after seven dates, Jimi Hendrix left the opening act for the Monkees after a concert at Forest Hills Stadium in New York. (Although much admired by the Monkees, Hendrix had received a less than enthusiastic reception from their fans.)

In 1981, 114 people were killed when a pair of walkways suspended above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency hotel collapsed during a tea dance.

In 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 bound for Europe, exploded and crashed off Long Island, New York, shortly after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing the 230 people on board.

In 1997, Woolworth Corp. announced it was closing its 400 remaining five and ten hundred stores across the country, ending 117 years in business.

In 2014, Eric Garner, a black man accused of selling untaxed bulk cigarettes, died shortly after being pinned to the ground by New York City police; a video of the teardown showed Garner repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.” (Garner’s family received $ 5.9 million from the city in 2015 to settle a wrongful death claim.)

Five years ago: Three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers investigating a report of a man with an assault rifle were killed, less than two weeks after a black man was shot dead by city police during ‘a confrontation that sparked nightly protests that reverberated across the country. (The gunman was killed by tactical agents.)

One year ago: Civil rights icon John Lewis, whose bloody beatings by Alabama state soldiers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who continued a long and celebrated career in Congress, died at the age of 80.

Today’s birthdays: Actor Donald Sutherland is 86 years old. Sportsman Verne Lundquist is 81 years old. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is 74 years old. Rock musician Terry “Geezer” Butler is 72 years old. Actor Lucie Arnaz is 70 years old. Actor David Hasselhoff is 69 years old. Rock musician Fran Smith Jr. (The Hooters) is 69 years old. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is 67 years old. Actor Tom Cullen is 36 years old. Actor Brando Eaton is 35 years old. R&B singer Jeremih (jehr-uh-MY ‘) is 34 years old. Actor Summer Bishil is 33 years old. Actor Billie Lourd is 29 years old. Actor Leo Howard is 24 years old.