On This Day: Sunday July 17, 2005 This is the 198th day of the year, with 167 days remaining in 2005.
Fact of the Day: Disneyland
In the early 1950s, Walt Disney started plans for a huge amusement park to be built near Los Angeles and it opened on July 17, 1955 in Anaheim. Disney's love of nostalgia and fantasy was evident in its design and construction and it soon became a mecca for tourists from around the world. A second Disney park, Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida, which was under construction at the time of Walt Disney's death, opened in 1971.
Holidays Feast day of The Seven Apostles of Bulgaria, St Clement of Okhrida and his Companions, St Leo IV, pope, St Ennodius, St Kenelm, St Speratus and his Companions, St Marcellina, and St Nerses Lampronazi.
Iraq: 17 July Revolution / Baath Revolution Day.
Korea: Constitution Day.
Puerto Rico: Munoz-Rivera Day.
Events 1754 - King's College opened in New York City; the Anglican academy would later become Columbia University.
1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
1867 - Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA -- the first dental school in the US.
1898 - During the Spanish-American War, Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrendered to US forces.
1945 - President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II.
1955 - Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California.
1975 - The US spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 docked in space.
1996 - Shortly after takeoff from New York's Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner bound for Paris explodes over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. Investigators concluded that the explosion resulted from mechanical failure.
1997 - After 117 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 five-and-dime stores.
Births 1889 - Erle Stanley Gardner, detective writer, creator of Perry Mason.
