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19441776 Club

Two ships explode at Port Chicago; 320 men are dead, most of them Black sailors loading bombs in the dark

The SS E. A. Bryan goes up at 10:18 p.m., taking the pier, a locomotive, and the Quinault Victory with it; of 320 killed, only 51 bodies can be identified.

At 10:18 p.m. on July 17, 1944, the SS E. A. Bryan was loading bombs and shells at Port Chicago Naval Magazine when it exploded, taking the pier, a locomotive, and the nearby Quinault Victory with it. The blast, equal to about 5,000 tons of TNT, killed 320 men instantly and injured 390 more. Only 51 bodies could be identified. Most of the dead were the Black enlisted sailors the Navy had assigned to load munitions without formal training…

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More from July 17
1975

Stafford and Leonov shake hands through an open hatch; American and Soviet spacecraft dock in orbit

Soyuz 19 and the last Apollo ever built linked up at 16:19 UTC, two days after lifting off from opposite sides of the world.
1945

Churchill, Stalin, and Truman convene at Cecilienhof; a new Europe is on the table

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1821

Spain hands over Florida; the U.S. takes possession of the peninsula under the Adams-Onís Treaty

Madrid settles for $5,000,000 in claims after years of Seminole raids, runaway slaves, and Jackson's soldiers crossing the border uninvited.
19621776 Club
A Davy Crockett round yields just 18 tons of TNT a mile and a half downrange, the W54 warhead the tiniest the country has built.
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More from The World Wars
1942

Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns

Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
1942

Congress makes the Pledge of Allegiance official, fifty years after a magazine wrote it

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1944

Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act; veterans to get mortgages, tuition, and a year's pay

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Flag rises on Okinawa; Ushijima and his chief of staff are dead by their own hand

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