What Happened on July 16th in History
30 historical events on this date
The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by municipalities as a...
Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as an MLB record.
Joseph Paul DiMaggio, nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "the Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American professional baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball...
Holocaust: Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv): The government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million...
Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United...
World War II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island.
A heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in calibre, whose design parameters were...
Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Nazareth is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel. In 2024 its population was 75,704. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel", Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious,...
The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.
Miss Macao (Chinese: 澳門小姐; Sidney Lau: O3 Moon4 Siu2 Je2) was a Catalina seaplane owned by Cathay Pacific and operated by subsidiary Macau Air Transport Company. On 16 July 1948 it was involved in...
Chaplain–Medic massacre: American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army.
The Chaplain–Medic massacre took place in the Korean War on July 16, 1950, on a mountain above the village of Tuman. South Korean local natives claim that it took place on a mountain above the...
Uruguay beats hosts Brazil 2–1 to win the World Cup in a match dubbed as the Maracanazo.
The Uruguay national football team, nicknamed La Celeste and Los Charrúas, have represented Uruguay in international men's football since their first international match in 1902 and is administered...
King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin of Belgium.
Leopold III was King of the Belgians from 23 February 1934 until his abdication on 16 July 1951. At the outbreak of World War II, Leopold tried to maintain Belgian neutrality, but after the German...
J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye.
Jerome David Salinger was an American author best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger published several short stories in Story magazine in 1940, before serving in World War II....
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; due to changing economics, all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, or simply Ringling, is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessors have run shows from 1871,...
KLM Flight 844 crashes off the Schouten Islands in present day Indonesia (then Netherlands New Guinea), killing 58 people.
KLM Flight 844 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Biak-Mokmer Airport, Dutch New Guinea to Manila International Airport, Manila, Philippines on 16 July 1957, which crashed into...
The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens.
The Mont Blanc Tunnel is a highway tunnel between France and Italy, under Mont Blanc in the Alps. It links Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France with Courmayeur, Aosta Valley, Italy, via the French Route...
South Vietnamese Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a formerly undetected communist spy and double agent, is hunted down and killed by unknown individuals after being sentenced to death in absentia for a February 1965 coup attempt against Nguyễn Khánh.
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam composed the ground forces of the South Vietnamese military from its inception in 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. Its predecessor was the ground...
The Apollo 11 lunar landing mission is launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida, USA.
Apollo 11 was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon, and the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. The mission was crewed by Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module...
Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein.
The president of the Republic of Iraq is the head of state of Iraq. Since the mid-2000s, the presidency is primarily a symbolic office, as the position does not possess significant power within the...
Sikorsky S-61 disaster: A helicopter crashes off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities.
On 16 July 1983, British Airways Helicopters Flight 5918, a British Airways Helicopters commercial Sikorsky S-61 helicopter, Oscar November (G-BEON), crashed in the southern Celtic Sea, in the...
The Luzon earthquake strikes the Philippines with an intensity of 7.7, affecting Benguet, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, La Union, Aurora, Bataan, Zambales and Tarlac.
The 1990 Luzon earthquake occurred on July 16 at 4:26 p.m. (PHDT) on the densely populated island of Luzon in the Philippines. The shock had a surface-wave magnitude of 7.8 and produced a...
The Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR declares state sovereignty over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is the unicameral parliament of Ukraine. It consists of 450 deputies presided over by a speaker. The Verkhovna Rada meets in the Verkhovna Rada building in Ukraine's...
The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is destroyed in a head-on collision with Jupiter.
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 was a comet that broke apart in July 1992 and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System...
John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, die when the aircraft he is piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., also referred to as JFK Jr., was an American businessman, attorney, magazine publisher, and journalist. He was the son of the 35th U.S. president John F. Kennedy, and...
Millennium Park, considered Chicago's first and most ambitious early 21st-century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Millennium Park is a public park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). The park, opened...
An Antonov An-24 crashes near Baney in Bioko Norte, Equatorial Guinea, killing 60 people.
The Antonov An-24 is a 44-seat twin turboprop regional airliner designed in 1957 in the Soviet Union by the Antonov Design Bureau. Later variants saw other uses, such as military transport and...
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.
The Chūetsu offshore earthquake was a powerful magnitude 6.6 earthquake that occurred 10:13 local time on July 16, 2007, in the northwest Niigata Prefecture of Japan. The earthquake, which occurred...
Teoh Beng Hock, an aide to a politician in Malaysia is found dead on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the offices of the Anti-Corruption Commission, sparking an inquest that gains nationwide attention.
Teoh Beng Hock was a Chinese Malaysian journalist and political aide to Ean Yong Hian Wah, a member of the Selangor state legislative assembly and state executive council. On 15 July 2009, the...
As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India.
On 16 July 2013, 23–27 students died, and dozens more fell ill at a primary school in the village of Gandaman in the Saran district of the Indian state of Bihar after eating a Midday Meal...
Syrian civil war: The Battle of Ras al-Ayn resumes between the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Islamist forces, beginning the Rojava–Islamist conflict.
The Syrian civil war was an armed conflict that began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale...
Four U.S. Marines and a United States Navy Sailor are killed in the a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines or simply the Marines, is the naval infantry service branch of the United States Armed Forces. The service is...
A 100-year-old building in Mumbai, India, collapses, killing at least 10 people and leaving many others trapped.
Mumbai, also known as Bombay, is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India, with an estimated population of 12.5...