On This Day:
Tuesday July 16, 2013

This is the 197th day of the year, with 168 days remaining in 2013.

Fact of the Day: comets

Comets are leftovers from the formation of the nine planets in the solar system billions of years ago. Comets are fragile balls of snow and dust found at the edge of the solar system in the Oort Cloud. The Oort Cloud is made up of about 10 million comets, some of which leave the cloud and travel toward the Sun. The Sun's heat melts the snow and these comets appear to grow greatly. Astronomers have seen about 700 comets in the Earth's sky.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Mary Magdalen Postel, St. Fulrad, St Athenogenes, St. Helier, St. Eustathius of Antioch, and St. Reineldis.
Bolivia: La Paz Day.

Events

1790 - The District of Columbia was established as the seat of the United States government. 
1862 - David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. 
1935 - The first parking meters were installed, in Oklahoma City.
1945 - The United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb, in the New Mexico desert. 
1951 - The novel "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger was first published. 
1969 - Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned lunar landing mission. 
1973 - During the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon's secret tape-recording system. 
1979 - Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.
2004 - Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice.
2005 - The sixth book in the popular Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by JK Rowling, is released.

Births

1821 - Mary Baker Eddy, American religious leader, founder of Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist).
1872 - Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, first to reach the South Pole.
1907 - Orville Redenbacher, American farmer and businessman.
1911 - Ginger Rogers (Virginia Katherine McMath), American actress and dancer who partnered with Fred Astaire.
1952 - Stewart Copeland, American drummer.
1967 - Will Ferrell, American comedian and actor.

Deaths

1557 - Anne of Cleves, 4th wife of Henry VIII, King of England.
1882 - Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady of the United States.
1918 - Russia's last czar, Nicholas II, his empress, and their five children, executed by the Bolsheviks. 
1999 - John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, when their single-engine plane plunged into the ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
2003 - Carol Shields, Canadian author.
2004 - Charles W. Sweeney, retired Air Force General and pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki in the final days of World War II.