On July 16th...

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1486 Painter Andrea del Sarto was born.

1548 La Paz, Bolivia, was founded.

1661 Explorer Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville was born.

1723 Painter Joshua Reynolds was born.

1769 The first mission in California was established at San Diego by Father Junípero Serra.

1790 The District of Columbia was established.

1798 The U. S. Public Health Service was established.
1798 The U. S. Marine Hospital was authorized.

1809 La Paz, Bolivia, declared its independence from the Spanish Crown and formed the Junta Tuitiva, the first independent government in Spanish America.

1821 Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science movement, was born.

1861 The Battle of Bull Run was fought.

1862 David Farragut became the first Rear Admiral of the United States Navy.

1867 D. R. Averill patented ready-mixed paint.
1867 Joseph Monier patented reinforced concrete.

1872 Arctic and Antarctic explorer Roald Amundsen was born.

1877 Béla Schick, developer of the Schick Test for diphtheria immunity, was born.

1879 John Hartley won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1880 Emily Stowe became the first woman licenced to practice medicine in Canada.

1882 Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of U. S. President Abraham Lincoln, died.

1883 William Renshaw won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.

1888 Lottie Dod and Ernest Renshaw won their respective singles championships at Wimbledon.

1896 Trygve Lie, first Secretary-General of the United Nations, was born.

1904 Islands of the Manu'a group (Samoa) were ceded to the United States by their chiefs.

1907 Orville Redenbacher, founder of a popcorn empire, was born.
1907 Actress Barbara Stanwyck was born.

1911 Dancer/actress Ginger Rogers was born.

1912 A naval torpedo that could be launched from an airplane was patented by B. A. Fiske.

1920 The United States defeated Australasia for the Davis Cup.

1925 King Faisal opened Iraq's first Parliament.

1926 National Geographic took the first natural-color undersea photos.

1933 Construction of the Grand Coulee Dam began.

1935 The first automatic parking meter in the United States was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1938 Paul Runyan won the PGA Championship.

1943 Football coach Jimmy Johnson was born.

1945 The United States tested its first atomic bomb, at Alamagordo, New Mexico.

1950 Uruguay defeated Brazil for the World Cup.

1951 King Leopold III of Belgium abdicated.
1951 Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, was published.

1954 The 367 Dash 80, progenitor of the Boeing 707, flew for the first time.

1956 Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus gave its last performance under a canvas tent.

1957 Fifty-eight of 68 persons aboard a Royal Dutch Airlines Super Constellation were killed when the plane crashed into the sea just off Biak Island, Indonesia.
1957 U.S. Marine Major John H. Glenn, Jr. set a new speed record on a flight from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station, California, to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York.

1961 Jacques Anquetil won the Tour de France.

1965 The Mount Blanc Road tunnel between France and Italy opened.

1967 Comedian Will Ferrell was born.

1968 Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Arif was ousted by the military.
1968 Football player Barry Sanders was born.

1969 Apollo 11, the first manned mission destined to land on the Moon, was launched.

1977 Janelle Commissiong, Miss Trinidad and Tobago, was crowned Miss Universe.

1981 Singer Harry Chapin died.

1983 A Sikorsky S-61 helicopter crashed off the Isles of Scilly, killing 20 persons.

1989 Betsy King won the U. S. Women's Open.

1990 A magnitude 7.7 earthquake killed 400 people in the Philippines.

1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter.

1995 Annika Sörenstam won the U. S. Women's Open.

1997 Fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered.

1999 John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, were killed in a plane crash.

2004 Millennium Park opened to the public in Chicago, Illinois.

2007 A magnitude 6.8 and aftershock of 6.6 off the Niigata coast of Japan killed 8 persons, injured at least 800, and damaged a nuclear power plant.

2007 Twenty-seven children died and 25 others were hospitalized after eating lunch contaminated with insecticide in India.

2015 Shootings at a military recruitment center and a naval reserve training center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, left 5 persons dead.

2016 Basketball player Nate Thurmond died.

2017 Roger Federer won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon.
2017 Park Sung-hyun won the U. S. Women's Open.

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This page was last updated on July 15, 2018.