today In history

Today is Monday, July 16, the 197th day of 2007. There are 168 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On July 16, 1945, the United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb, in the desert of Alamogordo, N.M.

On this date:

In 1790, the District of Columbia was established as the seat of the U.S. government.

In 1862, David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.

In 1907, 100 years ago, actress Barbara Stanwyck was born in New York.

In 1907, "Popcorn King" Orville Redenbacher was born in Brazil, Ind.

In 1957, Marine Maj. John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record by flying a jet from California to New York in three hours, 23 minutes and eight seconds.

In 1964, in accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and that "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

In 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.

In 1973, during the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon's secret taping system.

In 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.

In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when their single-engine plane, piloted by Kennedy, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Mass.

Ten years ago: Hundreds of FBI agents, some handing out photos in gay bars and hotels, blanketed South Florida in the continuing hunt for alleged prostitute-turned-serial killer Andrew Phillip Cunanan, suspected of gunning down designer Gianni Versace.

Five years ago: The Irish Republican Army issued an unprecedented apology for hundreds of civilian deaths over 30 years. The body of Samantha Runnion, the 5-year-old who had been kidnapped from her home in Stanton, Calif., was found in a heavily forested area about 50 miles away.

One year ago: President Bush and other Group of Eight world leaders meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, urged Israel to show "utmost restraint" and blamed Hezbollah and Hamas for escalating violence in the Middle East. Claiming election fraud had robbed him of the presidency, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led hundreds of thousands of marchers through Mexico's capital. Robert Brooks, chairman of Hooters of America, died in Myrtle Beach, S.C., at age 69.


Thought for Today: "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose." — J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (1904-1967).