1453 France defeats England at Castillon, France, ending the Hundred Years' War.
1762 Peter III of Russia is murdered and his wife, Catherine II, takes the throne.
1785 France limits the importation of goods from Britain.
1791 National Guard troops open fire on a crowd of demonstrators in Paris.
1799 Ottoman forces, supported by the British, capture Egyptian city from the French.
1801 The U.S. fleet arrives in Tripoli.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders to the British at Rochefort, France.
1821 Andrew Jackson becomes the governor of Florida.
1864 Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaces General Joseph E. Johnston.
1898 U.S. troops take Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1944 Field Marshall Rommel is wounded when Allied fighter hits his car in France.
1946 Chinese communists attack the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
1960 American pilot Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court.
1966 Ho Chi Minh orders a mobilization of N Vietnam to defend American airstrikes.
1987 Oliver North and John Poindexter testify to Congress on Iran-Contra scandal.
Born on July 17
1674 Isaac Watts, English minister and hymn writer.
1763 John Jacob Astor, American fur trader and entrepreneur.
1888 S.Y. Agnon, Israeli writer (The Day Before Yesterday).
1889 Erle Stanley Gardner, detective writer, creator of Perry Mason.
1894 Georges Lemaitre, Belgian astronomer.
1898 Bernice Abbott, photographer.
1899 James Cagney, American actor (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mister Roberts).
1902 Christina E. Stead, novelist and screenwriter.
1912 Art Linkletter, radio and television personality.
1922 Donald Davie, English poet and literary critic.
1923 James Purdy, writer (Cabot Wright Begins).
1925 Laszlo Nagy, Hungarian poet.
1935 Peter Schickele, composer, creator of P.D.Q. Bach.
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