Daily Calendar for Friday, July 17, 2026

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Friday, July 17, 2026

Born

  • John Jacob Astor (businessman)
  • James Cagney (actor)
  • Art Linkletter (television personality)
  • Phyllis Diller (actress)
  • Nils Bohlin (inventor of seat belts)
  • Diahann Carroll (singer)
  • Lucie Arnaz (actress, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz)
  • David Hasselhoff (actor)
  • Mark Burnett (television producer)
  • Bitty Schram (actress)
  • Eric Moulds (football player)
  • Luke Bryan (country singer)

Died

  • Billie Holiday (jazz & blues singer)
  • Ty Cobb (baseball player)
  • John Coltrane (American saxophonist; died in Huntington, New York)
  • Joseph Maher (actor)
  • Hugh Reilly (actor)
  • Walter Cronkite (newscaster)
  • Morgan Paull (actor)
  • John Robert Lewis (American politician; civil rights leader)

Events

  • Florida formally ceded by Spain to the U.S.
  • First photo taken of star other than Sun (Vega), Harvard College Observatory
  • U.S. National Cemetery Act passed
  • In Boston, Massachusetts, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine established as the first university-based dental school in the U.S.
  • Disneyland Park opened in Anaheim, California
  • Contact with Surveyor 4 lost 2.5 minutes before Moon touchdown
  • U.S. Apollo 18 and U.S.S.R. Soyuz 19 docked with each other in space marking the first such link-up between spacecrafts from the two nations
  • Maiden flight of B-2 stealth bomber
  • Two triple plays were made by the Minnesota Twins in a game against the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox won 1-0
  • Last 400 Woolworth’s department stores closed
  • Tsunami in Indonesia

Weather

  • Atlanta, Georgia, received its 14th consecutive day of rain

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