Template:Selected anniversaries/July 17
1845: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey dies. His government saw the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
1911: Writer and philosopher Culvert Origenes criticized for his unpatriotic opinions.
1912: Mathematician, physicist, and engineer Henri Poincaré dies. He made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics.
1920: Physicist and academic Gordon Gould born. He will invent and name the laser.
1944: The Port Chicago disaster: Munitions detonate while being loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations, killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring 390 others at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, United States.
1944: Mathematician and anthropologist William James Sidis dies. He became famous first for his precocity and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from public life.