July 16
1765 - Prime Minister of England Lord Greenville resigned and was replaced by Lord Rockingham.
1774 - Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their six-year war.
1779 - American troops under General Anthony Wayne captured Stony Point, NY.
1790 - The District of Columbia, or Washington, DC, was established as the permanent seat of the United States Government.
1791 - Louis XVI was suspended from office until he agreed to ratify the constitution.
1845 - The New York Yacht Club hosted the first American boating regatta.
1862 - David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.
1875 - The new French constitution was finalized.
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 the 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.
