Today is Monday, July 17, the 198th day of 2006. There are 167 days left in the year. On this date in 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Paris-bound Boeing 747, explodes and crashes off Long Island, N.Y.,

Today is Monday, July 17, the 198th day of 2006. There are 167 days left in the year. On this date in 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Paris-bound Boeing 747, explodes and crashes off Long Island, N.Y., shortly after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people aboard.
In 1821, Spain cedes Florida to the United States. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrender to U.S. forces. In 1917, the British royal family adopts the name "Windsor." In 1944, 322 people are killed when a pair of ammunition ships explodes in Port Chicago, Calif. In 1945, President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill begin meeting at Potsdam, Germany, in the final Allied summit of World War II. In 1955, Disneyland debuts in Anaheim, Calif. In 1975, an Apollo spaceship docks with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower linkup of its kind. In 1979, Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigns and flees into exile in Miami. In 1981, 114 people are killed when a pair of walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapses during a "tea dance." In 1986, White House chief of staff Donald Regan draws criticism for suggesting that American women would not be prepared to "give up all their jewelry" if the U.S. were to impose economic sanctions against South Africa.
July 17, 1981: The charred bodies of two men are discovered in the trunk of a 1979 Cadillac Seville that was found burning along Route 82 in Howland Township.
Jennifer Hall is selected from 18 contestants to reign as queen of Cortland's 1981 street fair. Kellie Roman was runner-up and Kim Stocz was Miss Congeniality.
Youngstown and Mahoning County take a first, tentative step toward consolidating their two health boards. Neil Altman, Youngstown health commissioner, and Paul Cramer, director of the Mahoning County Board of Health, meet in a closed session with adelegation from the Chamber of Commerce.
July 17, 1966: The search for a site on which to build a branch campus of Kent State University has shifted from the agrarian areas of Trumbull County to an older residential section of Warren. Also under consideration are a parcel in Howland and one near Cortland.
Steel, which provides nearly half the jobs and business volume in the Mahoning Valley, enters the midsummer doldrums period without the usually sharp downturn for the second year in a row.
A nationwide search has been launched for Richard Speck, a drifter who has been identified as the killer of eight nurses in a Chicago townhouse. .
July 17, 1956: More than an inch of rain falls on Downtown Youngstown in less than an hour, flooding streets and store basements, stranding hundreds of cars and knocking WFMJ-TV off the air for more than a half hour.
The Mahoning County Welfare Advisory Board says it is up to county commissioners as to whether striking steelworkers can receive relief payments.
Youngstown is portrayed as a "yeasty, lusty slice of Americana in transition" on a segment of the "Home" show on NBC-TV. The program was narrated by producer Arlene Francis, who described steel as the lifeblood of the city.
July 17, 1931: Coroner M.E. Hayes rules that Paul Glenn, 8, was shot and killed accidentally by Miss Rose Tomasino, a clerk at Joseph Canale's fruit store. The boy, who had permission to gather boxes for firewood from the rear storeroom, was shot twice with a shotgun that was kept in the store in case of a robbery. Police were first told the boy shot himself while playing with the gun; later that the gun discharged accidentally.
The Youngstown Chamber of Commerce will file a protest with the Interstate Commerce Commission against an increase in freight rates for steel that the chamber says will "annihilate" business in the Mahoning Valley.
Mrs. Julia Weimer, 89, a charter member of the Martin Luther Church, dies of injuries suffered at her home two weeks earlier. She had been in good health until the fall, in which she injured a hip.
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