This Day In History — Lunar Landing

July 16

1790
The District of Columbia was established as the seat of the United States government.

1918
Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.

1935
The first parking meters were installed in Oklahoma City.

1945
The first atomic bomb was tested in Alamogordo, N.M.

1951
J. D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye was published.

1969
Apollo 11 took off on the first manned flight to the moon.

1979
Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.

1999
John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren, died in a plane crash near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Birthdays

Ginger Rogers

1911–1995; Singer actress born in Independence, Missouri.

Andrea del Sarto

painter (1486)

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

painter (1796)

Mary Baker Eddy

founder, Christian Science Church (1821)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

journalist, activist (1862)

Roald Amundsen

Norwegian polar explorer (1872)

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson

baseball player (1887)

Trygve Lie

first secretary-general of the United Nations (1896)

Pinchas Zukerman

violinist and conductor (1948)

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