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“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
~ Oscar Wilde
Wikipedia (Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) an Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.)
July 16th, 622
The beginning of the Islamic calendar.
Wikipedia Photo: The Kabba. Mecca, Saudi Arabia. According to Islamic tradition, the cube-shaped Kabba dates back to the time of Abraham. It is the most sacred Muslim site, and the location towards which all Muslims face during prayer. credit © AP / EPA.
July 16th, 1054
East-West Schism: Three Roman legates break relations between Western and Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal Bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia.
Wikipedia.org Image: Fresco painting of the Resurrection Chora Church, Istanbul, Turkey
July 16th, 1212
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: after Pope Innocent III calls European knights to a crusade, forces of Kings Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre, Pedro II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal defeat those of the Berber Muslim leader Almohad thus marking a significant turning point in the Reconquista and in the medieval history of Spain.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa 1212
July 16th, 1769
Father Junípero Serra founds California's first mission, San Diego de Alcalá. Over the following decades, it evolves into the city of San Diego.
Wikipedia Photo: The reconstructed Mission San Antonio de Padua as it appears today. The baked brick Campanario is unique among the Missions.
July 16th, 1779
American Revolutionary War: Battle of Stony Point; troops of the Continental Army seize a fortified British Army position in a midnight bayonet attack.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
July 16th, 1782
First performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
Wikipedia Image: Mozart / 'Papageno', from Mozart's 'The Magic Flute', by Lynn Barnes and Papageno; Metropolitain Opera; 'Papageno' by Kay Konrad.
July 16th, 1790
The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.
Wikipedia Photo: The White House. North face, with square portico in 2007; South face, with round portico in 2007 (Derek Jensen)
July 16th, 1861
American Civil War:
1861 - The First Battle of Bull Run; at the order of President Abraham Lincoln, Union troops begin a 25 mile march into Virginia for what will become the first major land battle of the war.
1862 - David Farragut is promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold an admiral rank.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● Battle of Mobile Bay (1890) by Xanthus Russell Smith.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
July 16th, 1941
Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as a Major League Baseball record.
Wikipedia Photo: No major leaguer has come close to matching Joe DiMaggio's record hitting streak of 56 straight games.
July 16th, 1942
World War II: Holocaust;
1942 - Vel' d'Hiv Roundup - the government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.
Wikipedia Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.
July 16th, 1945
World War II:
1945 - The Heavy Cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island. This would be the last time the Indianapolis would be seen by the Mainland as she would be torpedoed by the Japanese Submarine I-58 on July 30 and sink with 880 out of 1,196 crewmen.
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.
Post World War II:
1948 - Arab-Israeli War; Operation Dekel - The city of Nazareth falls to Israeli troops.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
July 16th, 1948
The first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane, storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane.
Wikipedia Photo: Cathay Pacific Airways PBY Catalina amphibious aircraft Miss Macao
July 16th, 1950
Korean War:
1950 - Chaplain-Medic massacre; American POWs were massacred by North Korean Army.
Wikipedia Photo: Korean War Collage credit, The Big Picture, Boston Globe - (Associated Press; U.S. Department of Defense / SGT. F.C. Kerr; AP Photo; U.S. Department of Defense / TSGT. Charles B. Tyler; U.S. Department of Defense / TSGT. Charles B. Tyler; U.S. Department of Defense / TSGT. Robert H. Mosier; AP Photo / Max Desfor; U.S. Department of Defense / CPL. P. McDonald; AP Photo / Max Desfor; AP Photo/George Sweers; U.S. Navy / Maj. R.V. Spencer, UAF; AP Photo / Max Desfor).
July 16th, 1951
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is published for the first time by Little, Brown and Company.
Wikipedia Photo: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
July 16th, 1957
United States Marine major John Glenn flies a F8U Crusader supersonic et from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds, setting a new transcontinental speed record.
Wikipedia.org / Air&Space Photo: Project Bullet United States Marine major John Glenn flies a F8U Crusader. NASA
John Glenn's Transcontinental Record (1957). Youtube
July 16th, 1960
USS George Washington a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fires the first ballistic missile while submerged.
Wikipedia Photo: USS George Washington (SSBN-598)
July 16th, 1969
Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Wikipedia Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).
July 16th, 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Watergate Scandal: was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement.
Watergate Complex Washington, DC, credit Watergate Notes; President Richard M. Nixon defended himself against many allegations, National Archives; Oliver F. Atkins' photo of Nixon leaving the White House shortly before his resignation became effective, August 9, 1974.
July 16th, 1994
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collides with Jupiter.
Wikipedia Image: Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, credit NASA - Approach to Jupiter, torn into pieces as a result of a close approach to Jupiter in July 1992, will collide with Jupiter during the third week of July 1994.
July 16th, 1999
John F. Kennedy, Jr. piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, dies when his plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. His wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are also killed.
Wikipedia Image: Time Magazine John Kennedy Jr. commemorative issue July 26, 1999.
July 16th, 2007
Earthquake:
2007 - Chūetsu offshore earthquake; An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata, coast of Japan killing eight people, injuring at least 800 and damaging a nuclear power plant.
1990 - Luzon Earthquake; strikes in Benguet, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, La Union, Aurora, Bataan, Zambales and Tarlac, Philippines.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
July 16th, 2013
2013 - CBihar school meal poisoning incident: At least 23 children die at a school in Bihar, coast of India, after consuming food tainted with organophosphorus compounds.
2008 - Chinese milk scandal: Sixteen infants in Gansu Province, China, who had been fed on tainted milk powder, are diagnosed with kidney stones; in total an estimated 300,000 infants are affected.
Wikipedia Image: Illustrative organophosphates and related compounds: phosphatidylcholine, triphenylphosphate, cyclophosphamide, parathion, and zinc dithiophosphate.
July 16th, 2015
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2015 - Chattanooga shootings; Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)