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Made for the 250thOn this day › July 16
What happened on July 16 in American history
July 16 is the 197th day of the year (the 198th in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 8 stories from July 16 spanning 1769 to 1999. Among them: in 1769, Serra raises a cross on Presidio Hill; Spain plants its first foothold in Alta California; and in 1779, Wayne takes Stony Point by bayonet; 1,350 men climb the dark slope in silence and the garrison surrenders in twenty-five minutes.
1769Member story · 1776 Club
Serra raises a cross on Presidio Hill; Spain plants its first foothold in Alta California
Soldiers fire their guns as makeshift incense at the ceremony, founding Mission San Diego de Alcalá beside the Kumeyaay village of Kosa'aay.
1779Member story · 1776 Club
Wayne takes Stony Point by bayonet; 1,350 men climb the dark slope in silence and the garrison surrenders in twenty-five minutes
Muskets unloaded to prevent a stray shot, Wayne's light infantry storm the Hudson fortification just after midnight and send Washington word: the fort is theirs.
1790
Washington signs the Residence Act; the Potomac wins the capital over Philadelphia
A federal district up to ten miles square will rise near Georgetown, with Philadelphia holding the government as a ten-year stopgap while the new city is built.
1862Member story · 1776 Club
Congress creates the rank of rear admiral; Farragut is first to hold it
A title long rejected as too aristocratic for a republic, the new grade comes three months after Farragut forced his fleet past two forts and took New Orleans.
1945Member story · 1776 Club
USS Indianapolis slips out of San Francisco, alone, carrying the bomb's uranium core
Capt. McVay has orders to reach Tinian Island at speed; no escort leaves with him.
1945
The gadget detonates; 21,000 tons of TNT in an instant above the Jornada del Muerto
A plutonium device atop a 100-foot tower vaporizes the steel at 5:29 a.m., lighting the sky as far as Amarillo and melting desert sand to green glass.
1969
Saturn V lifts Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin off the pad; Apollo 11 is bound for the Sea of Tranquility
Kennedy's eight-year-old promise has a crew and a launch date; the rocket cleared the tower at Kennedy Space Center this morning.
1999Member story · 1776 Club
JFK Jr.'s plane goes down in Atlantic haze; he, his wife, and her sister are dead
The Piper Saratoga vanished from radar at 9:41 p.m., seven and a half miles short of Martha's Vineyard, in conditions that had erased the horizon.
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