History of 16 July
1912 – Bradley A. Fiske patented the airplane torpedo.
1926 – The first underwater color photographs appeared in “National Geographic” magazine. The pictures had been taken near the Florida Keys.
1935 – Oklahoma City became the first city in the U.S. to install parking meters.
1940 – Adolf Hitler ordered the preparations to begin on the invasion of England, known as Operation Sea Lion.
1942 – French police officers rounded up 13,000 Jews and held them in the Winter Velodrome. The round-up was part of an agreement between Pierre Laval and the Nazis. Germany had agreed to not deport French Jews if France arrested foreign Jews.
1944 – Soviet troops occupied Vilna, Lithuania, in their drive toward Germany.
1945 – The United States detonated the first atomic bomb in a test at Alamogordo, NM.
1950 – The largest crowd in sporting history was 199,854. They watched Uruguay defeat Brazil in the World Cup soccer finals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1951 – J.D. Salinger’s novel “The Catcher in the Rye” was first published.
1957 – Marine Major 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 – Little League Baseball Incorporated was granted a Federal Charter unanimously by the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
1969 – Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, FL, and began the first manned mission to land on the moon.
1970 – The Pittsburgh Pirates played their first game at Three Rivers Stadium.
1973 – Alexander P. Butterfield informed the Senate committee investigating the Watergate affair of the existence of recorded tapes.
1979 – Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq after forcing Hasan al-Bakr to resign.
1981 – After 23 years with the name Datsun, executives of Nissan changed the name of their cars to Nissan.
1985 – The All-Star Game, televised on NBC-TV, was the first program broadcast in stereo by a TV network.
2005 – J.K. Rowling’s book “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was released. It was the sixth in the Harry Potter series. The book sold 6.9 million copies on its first day of release.
2009 – In Chicago, Sears Tower was renamed Willis Tower.
2011 – The NASA space probe Dawn entered Vesta orbit.
2013 – As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India.
2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennesse.
Celebrating Birthday Today
1981 – Giuseppe Di Masi, Italian footballer
1981 – Robert Kranjec, Slovenian ski jumper
1982 – André Greipel, German cyclist
1982 – Michael Umaña, Costa Rican footballer
1983 – Duncan Keith, Canadian ice hockey player
1984 – Hayanari Shimoda, Japanese race car driver
1984 – Attila Szabó, Hungarian decathlete
1985 – Mārtiņš Kravčenko, Latvian basketball player
1986 – Dustin Boyd, Canadian ice hockey player
1986 – Misako Uno, Japanese actress, singer, and fashion designer
1987 – Mousa Dembélé, Belgian footballer
1987 – AnnaLynne McCord, American actress, and producer
1988 – Sergio Busquets, Spanish footballer
1989 – Gareth Bale, Welsh footballer
1990 – Bureta Faraimo, New Zealand rugby league player
1990 – Wizkid, Nigerian singer and songwriter
1990 – Johann Zarco, French motorcycle racer
1991 – Nate Schmidt, American ice hockey player
1991 – Andros Townsend, English footballer
1996 – Daniel Pearson, English actor and presenter