YEARS AGO FOR JULY 17

Today is Tuesday, July 17, the 198th day of 2018. There are 167 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1821: Spain cedes Florida to the United States.

1918: Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed by the Bolsheviks.

1944: During World War II, 320 men, two-thirds of them African-Americans, are killed when a pair of ammunition ships explode at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California.

1954: The two-day inaugural Newport Jazz Festival, billed as “The First American Jazz Festival,” opens in Rhode Island; Billie Holiday performs.

1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim, Calif.

1975: An Apollo spaceship docks with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower link-up of its kind.

1981: Some 114 people die when a pair of suspended walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapses during a tea dance.

1996: TWA Flight 800, a Europe-bound Boeing 747, explodes and crashed off Long Island, N.Y., shortly after departing JFK International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.

1997: Woolworth Corp. announces it is closing its 400 remaining five-and-dime stores across the country, ending 117 years in business.

2017: The latest Republican effort to repeal and replace “Obamacare” is dealt a fatal blow in the Senate when two more Republican senators announce their opposition to the measure.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: The Trumbull County Historical Society asks the Trumbull County Herb Society to establish an herb garden at the John Stark Edwards House on Monroe Street using plants that would have been common in the early 19th century.

Niles police, tracking a rash of bicycle thefts, found that the culprits were a brother and sister, 9 and 12 years old, who would borrow bikes and then abandon them. The response of Capt. Al Kijowski, the department’s juvenile officer: Use a police charity fund to buy the kids their own Huffys.

Duane Darby pitches a two-hitter, striking out 12 as Sports Cage blanks JL Clevelanders 4-0 in the first round of the 31st Ohio State Connie Mack Tournament at Hubbard.

1978: Bob Hope will be the Saturday night grandstand attraction at the Canfield Fair, announces Robert A. Rose, fair board director in charge of attractions.

Youngstown Water Commissioner J. Kenneth Gran says Water Department meter readers will be dressed in new blue uniforms purchased from a $200 annual clothing allowance approved by city council.

Harry Arroyo, one of the classiest amateur boxers in the United States, will be featured in a boxing show at W.D. Packard Music Hall in Warren sponsored by the Howland Boosters Club.

1968: Atty. Charles Owsley is re-elected president of the Youngstown Players. Other officers are Jerry Knight, Mrs. William Flynn, Sidney Moyer and Atty. Edward Friedlob.

The South Side Teen Lounge is the last of five teen lounges sponsored by the Youngstown Area Community Action Council.

Advertisement: Sears cycle sale: Compact scooter, 59cc, 43 mph, $199; 106cc, 9 horsepower super sport motorcycle, $399; hot new 250cc, 16.5 horsepower, top speed 80 mph, $566.

1943: Ohio Atty. Gen. Thomas J. Herbert tells the Youngstown Kiwanis Club that the state’s investigation of vice in Youngstown is aimed at the numbers racket, “which the FBI has listed as the nation’s No. 1 breeder of lawlessness.”

Pvt. Martin Brutz, former Niles High star and a guard at Notre Dame, will play with the College All-Stars against the Washington Redskins, National League champions, in an annual tilt at Evanston.