Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

July 17 is the 198th day of the year (199th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 167 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

180 - 12 inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians.

1203 - The Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople by assault.

1402 – Yongle becomes Emperor of China.

1429 - Hundred Years' War: Charles VIII of France is crowned King.

1453 - Battle of Castillon: France defeats England in the last battle of the Hundred Years' War.

1717 - George Frideric Handel's Water Music is premiered, as King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians.

1771 - Bloody Falls massacre: Chipewyan chef Matonabbee, travelling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland expedition, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.

1791 - Members of France's National Guard under control of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, killing 50 people.

1821 – Florida goes into US control.

1863 - The New Zealand Wars resume as British forces in New Zealand led by Duncan Cameron begin their invasion at Waikato.

1897 – The Klondike Gold Rush begins in North-western Canada.

1917 – The British Royal Family changes its name to Windsor.

1918 – Nicholas II, the Czar of Russia, his wife, and their 5 children are executed by the Bolsheviks, under orders from Vladimir Lenin.

1936 – The Spanish Civil War begins.

1944 - Port Chicago disaster: At Port Chicago near San Francisco Bay, two ships carrying ammunition for the war explode, killing 320 people.

1944 - World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, France.

1945 - World War II: Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin meet in Potsdam to discuss the future of a defeated Germany.

1948 – The South Korean Constitution is proclaimed.

1955 – Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California.

1962 - Nuclear weapons testing: The Small Boy test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation of the Nevada National Security Site.

1968 - A revolution in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba'ath Party is installed in power with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as new President.

1973 – Afghanistan: Mohammed Daoud Khan removes his cousin Mohammed Zahir Shah from power.

1976 – 25 African countries boycott the Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada.

1976 – Indonesia takes control of East Timor.

1979 – The Sandinistas start to govern Nicaragua, after Anastasio Somoza Debayle flees to Miami, Florida.

1981 - The Humber Bridge in England is opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

1981 - A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, collapses, killing 114 people and injuring over 200.

1989 - Poland restores diplomatic relations with Vatican City.

1994 – Brazil wins the FIFA World Cup for a fourth time, after a penalty shootout win over Italy, which is remembered for Roberto Baggio's missed penalty kick.

1996 – A Boeing 747 airplane explodes near Long Island, New York, killing 230 people.

1998 - At a conference in Rome 120 countries vote to create the International Criminal Court.

1998 – An earthquake causes a tsunami, which destroys ten villages in Papua New Guinea, killing 3,183 people, and leaving more than 2,000 unaccounted for.

1998 - 80 years after being executed, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family are buried at the St. Catherine Chapel in St. Petersburg.

2001 - Concorde is brought back into service nearly a year a crash near Paris.

2006 – A tsunami south of Java kills around 300 people.

2007 – A plane crashes and bursts into flames at São Paulo International Airport in Brazil, killing all 187 people on board, and 12 on the ground.

2011 – Japan wins the FIFA Women's World Cup, defeating the United States in a penalty shoot-out.

2014 - Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashes in Eastern Ukraine near the border with Russia, having been reportedly shot down by a missile, killing all 298 people on board.

2014 - Israel-Gaza Strip Conflict: Israel launches a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

2015 - Over 120 people are killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq.

2015 - Formula One racing driver Jules Bianchi dies of injuries sustained in a crash at the Japanese Grand Prix over nine months earlier, at the age of 25.

2018 - The European Union-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement is signed.

2019 - The Kivu Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization.