TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS MONDAY, JULY 16, the 197th day of 2018. There are 168 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1945, the United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, N.M.
In 1790, a site along the Potomac River was designated the permanent seat of the United States government; the area became Washington, D.C.
In 1862, Flag Officer David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the United States Navy.
In 1935, the first parking meters were installed in the United States, in Oklahoma City.
In 1951, the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger was first published by Little, Brown and Co.
In 1957, Marine Corps Maj. John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record by flying a Vought F8U Crusader jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8.4 seconds.
In 1964, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
In 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.
In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald
Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Detroit.
In 1981, singer Harry Chapin was killed when his car was struck by a tractortrailer on New York’s Long Island Expressway.
In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when their single-engine plane, piloted by Kennedy, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
In 2002, the Irish Republican Army issued an unprecedented apology for the deaths of “noncombatants” over 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh is 86. International Tennis Hall-of-Famer Margaret Court is 76. College Football Hall-of-Famer and football coach Jimmy Johnson is 75. Violinist Pinchas Zukerman and actor-singer Ruben Blades are 70. Rock composer-musician Stewart Copeland is 66. Playwright Tony Kushner is 62. Dancer Michael Flatley is 60. Actress Phoebe Cates is 55. Actor Daryl “Chill” Mitchell is 53. Actor-comedian Will Ferrell is 51. College and Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Barry Sanders is 50. Actress AnnaLynne McCord is 31. Pop singer-musician Luke Hemmings (5 Seconds to Summer) is 22.