July 16

1557 – Anne of Cleves dies

1723 – British portrait painter, Joshua Reynolds, is born

1747 – Italian painter, Giuseppe Crespi, dies

1765 – English Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, resigns and is replaced by Lord Rockingham

1769 – Father Junipero Serra founds the first Catholic mission in San Diego, California

1774 – Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their six-year war

1779 – American troops capture Stony Point, NY

1790 – Congress declares Washington, DC the new capital

1808 – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark help form the Missouri Fur Company

1821 – Founder of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy, is born

1862 – Journalist, Ida Bell Wells, is born

1863 – The draft riots enter their fourth day in New York City in response to the Enrollment Act

1872 – Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, is born

1875 – The new French constitution is finalized

1882 – Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln, dies of a stroke

1896 – First Secretary General of the UN, Trygve Lie, is born

1907 – Actress, Barbara Stanwyck, is born

1907 – Farmer and businessman, Orville Redenbacher, is born

1911 – Actress and dancer, Ginger Rogers, is born

1915 – Author and co-founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Ellen G. White, dies

1918 – Czar Nicholas and his family are murdered by Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg, Russia

1928 – Writer, Anita Brookner, is born

1935 – The world’s first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, OK

1940 – Adolf Hitler orders preparations for the invasion of England

1940 – Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, WWI hero, becomes prime minister of the Vichy government in France

1941 – Norwegian novelist and playwright, Dag Solstad, is born

1944 – Soviet troops occupy Vilnius, Lithuania, in their drive towards Germany

1945 – The US detonates the first atomic bomb in a test at Alamogordo, NM

1947 – American activist and criminal, Assata Shakur, is born

1948 – Songwriter and actor, Ruben Blades, is born

1948 – Brooklyn Dodgers Manager, Leo Durocher, announces that he will be joining the New York Giants

1948 – Violinist and conductor, Pinchas Zukerman, is born

1951 – JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is published

1960 – German field marshal, Albert Kesselring, dies

1967 – Comedian, Will Ferrell, is born

1969 – Apollo 11 blasts off from Cape Kennedy, Florida, heading for a landing on the moon

1973 – The Senate Armed Services Committee begins an investigation into allegations that the US Air Force made thousands of secret B-52 raids into Cambodia that will greatly damage the Nixon administration

1979 – Jeffrey MacDonald goes on trial for the stabbing murder of his wife and children ten years prior, which he had set up to mimic the Charles Manson murders.  He was given three life sentences

1990 – Over 1,000 are killed when a 7.7-magnitude earthquake strikes Luzon Island in the Philippines

1995 – Amazon officially opens for business as an online bookseller

1999 – A private plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. is lost over the waters off Martha’s Vineyard

2002 – President George Bush announces his plan for homeland security in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks