July 16 Events In History

EVENTS

• 1769 – San Diego was founded as the mission San Diego de Alcala by Father Junipero Serra.
• 1918 – The Bolsheviks execute Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family.
• 1941 – Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees got a hit in his 56th straight game.

  

• 1945 – The US detonates the first plutonium-based test nuclear weapon ushering in the Atomic Age.
• 1951 – The novel “Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger is published.
• 1969 – Apollo 11 takes off. It will become the first manned space mission to land on the moon.
• 1979 – Iraqi president, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns. The fourth president of Iraq resigned from his post citing health reasons and promoted his Vice President, Saddam Hussein to the post of President.
• 1981 – Mahathir bin Mohamad takes office for the first time. Mohmad, took office as the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia and remained in the position until 2003, becoming Malayasia’s longest serving prime minister and Asia’s longest serving politician.
• 1994 – Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 collides with Jupiter. The Jupiter orbiting comet collided with Jupiter. It was the first time in recorded history that astronomers had observed a collision between two celestial objects.
• 1995 – Amazon.com sells its first book. The e-commerce website was first founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookstore. The first book sold by the Internet giant was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter.
• 1999 – A small plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. took off at 8:38 p.m. from Fairfield, New Jersey, heading toward Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren were passengers on the 200 mile trip. The plane was expected to arrive about 10 p.m. but disappeared off radar at 9:40 p.m. Five days later, July 21, following an extensive search, the bodies were recovered from the plane wreckage in 116 feet of water roughly 7 miles off Martha’s Vineyard. The next day, following an autopsy, the cremated remains of John F. Kennedy, 38, his wife Carolyn, 33, and her sister Lauren, 34, were scattered at sea from a U.S. Navy ship, with family members present, not far from where the plane had crashed.

BIRTHDAYS

• 1732 – British portrait painter Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was born in Plympton, Devon, England.
• 1821 – Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) was born near Concord, New Hampshire.
• 1862 – Ida B. Wells ( Journalist & Activist)
• 1872 – Roald Amundsen (Explorer of the South Pole)
• 1907 – Orville Redenbacher (American farmer, businessman)
• 1911 – Ginger Rogers (Actress)

  

• 1947 – Assata Shakur (American activist, criminal)
• 1967 – Will Ferrell (Comedian and actor)
• 1968 – Barry Sanders (Football Player)
• 1971 – Corey Feldman (Actor)

DEATHS

• 1557 – Anne of Cleves
• 1747 – Giuseppe Crespi (Italian painter)
• 1882 – Mary Todd Lincoln (American wife of Abraham Lincoln, 17th First Lady of the United States)

  

• 1915 – Ellen G. White (American author, co-founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church)
• 1960 – Albert Kesselring (German field marshal)