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 July 16, 1945, the United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico; the same day, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California on a secret mission to deliver atomic bomb components to Tinian Island in the Marianas. On this date: 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” and that “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
In 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.
In 1973, during the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon’s secret taping system.
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 tractor-trailer 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, Massachusetts.
In 2002, the Irish Republican Army issued an unprecedented apology for the deaths of “noncombatants” over 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.
Ten years ago: Republican John McCain addressed the annual convention of the NAACP, telling the civil rights group in Cincinnati he would expand education opportunities, partly through vouchers for low-income children to attend private schools. Israel freed notorious Lebanese militant Samir Kantar and four others after Hezbollah guerrillas handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. Florida resident Casey Anthony, whose 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, had been missing a month, was arrested on charges of child neglect, making false official statements and obstructing a criminal investigation. (Casey Anthony was later acquitted at trial of murdering Caylee, whose skeletal remains were found in December 2008; she was convicted of lying to police.)