July 17

• July 17, 1453
  Actively used artillery France defeat England at the Battle at Castillon in France, marking end of the Hundred Years War
• July 17, 1695
  The Bank of Scotland is founded, and is granted a 21-year banking monopoly with note-issuing privileges
• July 17, 1762
  Peter III, Emperor of Russia, is murdered by conspiracy led by his wife, German Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, who becomes Empress of Russia Catherine II
• July 17, 1789
  The Great Fear caused by peasant rebellions swept through France as the Revolution continued
• July 17, 1830
  French tailor Barthélemy Thimonnier patents the first practical and widely used sewing machine
• July 17, 1850
  Astronomer William Cranch Bond and photographer John Adams Whipple focus on Vega and produce the first photograph of a star
• July 17, 1876
  At Warbonnet Creek, Nebraska, Buffalo Bill Cody, an American soldier, takes the scalp of Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hair following a duel
• July 17, 1898
  United States troops under General William Rufus Shafter take Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War
• July 17, 1902
  Willis Carrier, an American engineer, publishes drawings for the world's first modern air conditioning system to depress relative humidity due to quality problems in the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing
• July 17, 1945
  American President Harry Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet at Schloss Cecilienhof in Potsdam near Berlin, Germany and divide Europe into Western and Soviet blocs
• July 17, 1955
  Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, California, with eighteen attractions which attract 28,000-33,000 guests for the day
• July 17, 1979
  Nicaraguan dictator General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns due to Nicaraguan revolution and flees to Miami, Florida
• July 17, 1981
  Israeli aircraft bomb Beirut, destroying multi-storey apartment blocks containing the offices of PLO associated groups, killing approximately 300 civilians and resulting in worldwide condemnation and a U.S. embargo on the export of aircraft to Israel
• July 17, 2014
  Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777 with 298 people on board, crashes in eastern Ukraine after being shot down by a missile