Saturday, July 16

This Day In History

• 1790   The District of Columbia was established as the seat of the United States government.
• 1862   David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.
• 1935   The first parking meters were installed, in Oklahoma City.
• 1945   The United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb, in the desert near Alamogordo, N.M.
• 1951   J.D. Salinger's novel ''The Catcher in the Rye'' was published.
• 1957   Marine Maj. John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record when he flew a jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
• 1964   In accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater said ''extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice'' and ''moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.''
• 1966   Chinese leader Mas Tse-tung, front in photo below, took a swim in the Yangtze River near Wuhan in an effort to dispel rumors that he was seriously ill.
• 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.
• 1979   Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.
• 1980   Ronald Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination at the party's convention in Detroit.
• 1999   John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when the single-engine plane Kennedy was piloting plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Mass.

Happy Birthday To

• 1821   Mary Baker Eddy (religious leader: founder of Christian Science; died Dec 3, 1910)
• 1907   Orville Redenbacher (popcorn gourmet & tycoon; died Sep 19, 1995)
• 1911   Ginger Rogers (Virginia Katherine McMath)
• 1942   Margaret Court Smith (International Tennis Hall of Famer)
• 1968   Will Ferrell (comedian, actor: Saturday Night Live)