Today:
1779: During the American Revolutionary War, American troops led by General Anthony Wayne successfully captured a fortified British position at Stony Point, New York, in a midnight bayonet attack.
1790: The Residence Act was signed into law, designating a site along the Potomac River as the permanent seat of the United States government, which would become Washington, D.C.
1862: David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the United States Navy.
1918: Czar Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor, and his family were executed by Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, Russia, bringing an end to the Romanov dynasty.
1935: The world’s first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
1945: The United States detonated its first experimental atomic bomb, known as “Trinity,” in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
1951: J.D. Salinger’s influential novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” was first published.
1969: Apollo 11, the first manned mission to land on the moon, blasted off from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Florida, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
1979: Saddam Hussein officially became president of Iraq after Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigned.
1999: John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette died when the plane piloted by Kennedy crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.