Shimla, July 16 – Keekli Bureau
1054
Humbert of Silva Candida, cardinal and papal legate, excommunicated Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, who retaliated by excommunicating the cardinal, which led to the schism between the churches of Rome and Constantinople.
1377
Richard II was officially installed as king of England, almost a month after the death of his grandfather, Edward III.
1862
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, an American journalist who led a crusade against lynching, was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
1882
First lady (1861–65) Mary Todd Lincoln—the wife of Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States—died at age 63.
1941
American baseball player Joe DiMaggio set an MLB record for most consecutive games (56) with a hit.
1945
First atomic bomb exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The United States tested the first atomic bomb this day in 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and the following month dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, hastening the end of World War II.
1951
J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which centred on the sensitive, rebellious adolescent Holden Caulfield, was published and later became a classic.
1965
The Mont Blanc Tunnel officially opened, linking France and Italy; at the time, it was the world’s longest vehicular tunnel, spanning 7.3 miles (11.7 km).
1969
Apollo 11 lifted off from NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and four days later two of its astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, became the first humans to set foot on the Moon.
1979
Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq, and his brutal rule, which lasted 24 years, was marked by costly and unsuccessful wars with neighbouring countries as well as atrocities against the Iraqi people.
1999
American publisher and lawyer John F. Kennedy, Jr., the only son of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, died after the airplane he was piloting crashed off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; also killed were his wife and her sister.
2001
Jacques Rogge of Belgium was chosen to replace Juan António Samaranch as the president of the International Olympic Committee.
2004
Chicago officially opened its Millennium Park, which featured fountains, eye-catching sculptures, and a large outdoor concert facility designed by architect Frank Gehry.
2017
American filmmaker George A. Romero—who was known for his horror films, notably Night of the Living Dead (1968), which launched a series of related movies—died at age 77.
2018
U.S. President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and the summit proved highly controversial as Trump questioned the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
