Portal:United States/On this day/July 16

On this day for the United States

July 16:

Events

• 1769 - Father Junipero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first mission in California. The mission later evolves into the city of San Diego.
• 1790 - The signing of the Residence Bill establishes a site along the Potomac River as the District of Columbia (seat of government).
• 1862 - American Civil War: David G. Farragut becomes the first United States Navy rear admiral.
• 1941 - New York Yankees' Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his 56th consecutive game.
• 1945 - Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
• 1955 - Original Disneyland park opens in Anaheim, California.
• 1957 - United States Marine Major John Glenn flies a F8U Crusader supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds setting a new transcontinental speed record.
• 1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 11 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida and will become the first manned space mission to land on the moon.
• 1973 - Watergate Scandal: Former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield informs the United States Senate that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially-incriminating conversations.
• 1999 - John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The Piper Saratoga aircraft was piloted by Kennedy.
• 2004 - Millennium Park, considered the first and most ambitious architectural project in the early 21st century for Chicago, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley.