Historical Crap..uh hum...I mean data

Go to Wikipedia and put in your birth date (minus the year) and you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about that date in history.

A little bitty ditty on August 17:

1786 - Birth: Davy Crockett, American frontiersman and soldier (d. 1836)

1877 - Arizona blacksmith F.P. Cahill is fatally wounded by Billy the Kid. Cahill will die the next day, becoming the first person killed by the Kid.

1893 - Birth: Mae West, American actress and playwright (d. 1980)

1896 - Death: Bridget Driscoll, world's first automobile fatality

1943 - Birth: Robert De Niro, American actor

1960 - Birth: Sean Penn, actor, director

1962 - East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin. He thus became the first victim of the wall.

1969 - Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage.

1998 - Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admits before the nation that he "misled people" about his relationship.