August 17
1807 - Robert Fulton's steamboat, the Clermont, began its trip up the Hudson River to Albany.
1863 - Fort Sumter, South Carolina was bombarded by Union ships during the Civil War.
1896 - Prospectors found gold in Alaska, a discovery that set off the Klondike gold rush.
1915 - A mob in Cobb County, Georgia, lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, 31, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who'd maintained his innocence, was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.)
1945 - Indonesian nationalists proclaimed independence from the Netherlands.
1945 - The George Orwell novel "Animal Farm," an allegorical satire of Soviet Communism, was first published in London by Martin Secker & Warburg.
1962 - 18-year-old Peter Fechter was shot and killed by guards at the Berlin Wall, spurring riots.
1969 - Hurricane Camille devastated the Gulf Coast, killing 248 people.
1978 - The first successful trans-Atlantic balloon flight landed outside of Paris.
1982 - The first commercially produced compact discs, a recording of ABBA's "The Visitors," were pressed at a Philips factory near Hanover, West Germany.
1987 - Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command, committed suicide at Spandau Prison at age 93.
1988 - Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel were killed in a mysterious plane crash.
1998 - President Bill Clinton gave grand jury testimony via closed-circuit television from the White House concerning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; he then delivered a TV address in which he denied previously committing perjury, admitted his relationship with Lewinsky was "wrong," and criticized Kenneth Starr's investigation.
1999 - More than 17,000 people were killed when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Turkey.
2011 - Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
2018 - President Donald Trump said he had canceled plans for a Veterans Day military parade, citing what he called a "ridiculously high" price tag; he accused local politicians in Washington of price-gouging.
2020 - Texas joined New York, New Jersey and California as states with at least 10,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths; about 80 percent of the Texas deaths were reported since June 1, after the state embarked on one of the fastest reopenings in the country.
2022 - Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized.
Birthdays
28 - Gracie Gold (figure skater)
29 - Taissa Farmiga (actress)
31 - Saraya "Paige" Bevis (professional wrestler)
32 - Austin Butler (actor)
35 - Brady Corbet (actor)
37 - Bryton James (actor)
37 - Andrea Espada (TV host/model)
45 - Jelena Karleusa (singer)
49 - Giuliana Rancic (TV personality)
52 - Jorge Posada (baseball player)
53 - Jim Courier (tennis player)
53 - Tammy Townsend (actress)
54 - Christian Laettner (basketball player)
54 - Donnie Wahlberg (singer)
56 - David Conrad (actor)
59 - Maria McKee (singer)
63 - Sean Penn (actor)
64 - Jonathan Franzen (author)
65 - Belinda Carlisle (singer)
72 - Robert Joy (actor)
80 - Robert DeNiro (actor)
82 - Boog Powell (baseball player)
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Today in Sports History - August 17
1894 - John Wadsworth of Louisville set a major league record when he gave up 28 base hits in a single game.
1933 - Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees sets a record by playing in his 1,308th consecutive game.
1957 - Baseball player Richie Ashburn fouls and hits fan Alice Roth twice in the same game while batting for the Philadelphia Phillies; his first hit breaks her nose, the second hits her while she is on a stretcher.
1973 - Willie Mays hits the 660th and final home run of his career.
1986 - Pete Rose (Cincinnati Reds) was struck out for his last at bat by San Diego Padres relief pitcher Rich "Goose" Gossage.
1987 - Muhammad Ali is elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame.
2008 - American swimmer Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games, breaking the record set by Mark Spitz in the 1972 Games.
2013 - The attorney for a young man who'd testified he was fondled by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky said his client had reached a settlement, the first among dozens of claims made against the school amid the Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
2013 - Kansas City's Miguel Tejada was suspended 105 games by Major League Baseball for violating its Joint Drug Program, one of the longest suspensions ever handed down.
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