TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, JULY 16, the 197th day of 2017. 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; 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.
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 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 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.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh is 85. Soul singer Denise LaSalle is
83. International Tennis Hall of Famer Margaret Court is 75. College Football Hall of Famer and football coach Jimmy Johnson is 74. Violinist Pinchas Zukerman and actor-singer Ruben Blades are 69. Rock composer-musician Stewart Copeland is 65. Actress Phoebe Cates and actor Paul Hipp are
54. Actor-comedian Will Ferrell and actor Jonathan Adams are 50. College and Pro Football Hall of Famer Barry Sanders is 49. Actor Corey Feldman and rock musician Ed Kowalczyk (Live) are 46. Actress AnnaLynne McCord is
30. Actor-singer James Maslow is 27. Actor Mark Indelicato is 23. Pop singermusician Luke Hemmings (5 Seconds to Summer) is 21.