1. In 1862, the Battle of Flat Lick Creek took place in Missouri, resulting in a Union victory over Confederate forces.

2. On July 17, 1944, the Port Chicago disaster occurred in California, but several of the sailors killed in the explosion were from Missouri.

3. Missouri native Bess Truman was born on July 17, 1885. She would go on to become the First Lady of the United States from 1945 to 1953 as the wife of President Harry S. Truman.

4. In 1876, Missouri Governor Hardin Runnels signed a bill establishing Lincoln Institute, now called Lincoln University, as the first degree-granting historically Black college west of the Mississippi River.

5. On July 17, 1861, Confederate General Sterling Price declared martial law in the Missouri town of Lexington, which he had just captured. This was one of the early conflicts in the state during the American Civil War.