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The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly explosion that took place on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, in the United States. Munitions being loaded aboard a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations detonated, killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring 390 others. Most of the dead and injured were enlisted African American sailors. A month later, continuing unsafe conditions inspired hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Fifty men, called the Port Chicago 50, were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to long prison terms. Forty-seven of the 50 were released in January 1946; the remaining three served additional months in prison. During and after the trial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the court-martial proceedings. Due to public pressure, the United States Navy reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945; the court affirmed the guilt of the convicted men. Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre among African Americans and liberal white Americans making it, along with other race-related Navy protests of 1944–1945, a significant motivator for the Navy to change its practices and begin in February 1946 to desegregate its forces. (more...)

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July 17: Yama-boko Junkō in Kyoto, Japan; Constitution Day in South Korea

• 1936 – Nationalist rebels attempted a coup d'état against the Second Spanish Republic, sparking the Spanish Civil War.
• 1955 – Disneyland (Sleeping Beauty Castle pictured) in Anaheim, California, the only theme park to be designed, built, and operated by Walt Disney, opened during a televised ceremony.
• 1973 – Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last King of Afghanistan, was ousted in a coup by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.
• 1998 – Biologists reported in the scientific journal Science how they sequenced the genome of Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis.
• 2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054 crashed upon landing during rain at the Congonhas-São Paulo Airport in São Paulo, Brazil, killing 199 people, the highest death toll of any aviation accident in Latin America and the highest death toll of any accident involving an Airbus A320 airliner in the world.

• More anniversaries: July 16 – July 17 – July 18

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