Today in History
Today’s highlight:
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:
1790:
A site along the Potomac River was designated the permanent seat of the United States government; the area became Washington, D.C.
1862:
Flag Officer David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the United States Navy.
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.”
1969:
Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.
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.
1980:
Former California Gov. Ronald Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Detroit.
1994:
The first of 21 pieces of comet Shoemaker-levy 9 smashed into Jupiter, to the joy of astronomers awaiting the celestial fireworks.
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.
2002:
The Irish Republican Army issued an unprecedented apology for the deaths of “noncombatants” over 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.
2004:
Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement by a federal judge in New York for lying about a stock sale.
2008:
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.
Ten years ago:
Retired intelligence analyst Kendall Myers, the 73-year-old great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for quietly spying for Cuba for nearly a third of a century from inside the State Department; his wife, Gwendolyn, was sentenced to 512 years.
Five years ago:
A gunman unleashed a barrage of fire at a recruiting center and another U.S. military site a few miles apart in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing four Marines and a sailor before he was shot to death by police; authorities identified the gunman as Kuwaiti-born Muhammad Youssef
Abdulazeez of Tennessee.
One year ago:
The House voted to condemn what it called “racist comments” by President Donald Trump aimed at four congresswomen of color, despite Trump’s insistence that he didn’t have “a racist bone in my body.”