17th July: Today In History

Today is Monday, July 17th, the 198th day of 2017. There are 167 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlights in History:

Events:

1967:  After seven dates, Jimi Hendrix quit as the opening act for the Monkees following a concert at Forest Hills Stadium in New York. (Although greatly admired by the Monkees, Hendrix had received a less than enthusiastic reception from their fans.) Jazz composer-musician John Coltrane died in Long Island, New York, at age 40.

1717:  George Frideric Handel’s “Water Music” was first performed by an orchestra during a boating party on the River Thames (tehmz), with the musicians on one barge, and King George I listening from another.

1821:  Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

1917:  During World War I, Britian’s King George V issued a proclamation decreeing that the royal family adopt the name “Windsor” while relinquishing “the Use of All German Titles and Dignities.” Comedian and actress Phyllis Diller was born in Lima, Ohio.

1918: Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.

1936:  The Spanish Civil War began as right-wing army generals launched a coup attempt against the Second Spanish Republic.

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.

1955:  Disneyland had its opening day in Anaheim, California.

1975:  An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.

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

1996:  TWA Flight 800, a Europe-bound Boeing 747, exploded and crashed off Long Island, New York, shortly after departing John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.

1997:  Woolworth Corp. announced it was closing its 400 remaining five-and-dime stores across the country, ending 117 years in business.

2014: All 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine.

Birthdays:

Actor Donald Sutherland is 85.

Actress-singer Diahann Carroll is 82.

Rock musician Spencer Davis is 78.

Sportscaster Verne Lundquist is 77.

Comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor is 77.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is 70.

Rock musician Terry “Geezer” Butler is 68.

Actress Lucie Arnaz is 66.

Quotes Of The Day:

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.