This day in history

► Today is Friday, July 16, the 197th day of 2010. There are 168 days left in the year. ► Today’s birthdays: Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh is 78. Soul singer Denise LaSalle is 76. Soul singer William Bell is 71. International Tennis Hall of Famer Margaret Court is 68. Violinist Pinchas Zukerman is 62. Actor-singer Ruben Blades is 62. Rock musician Stewart Copeland is 58. Playwright Tony Kushner is 54. Dancer Michael Flatley is 52. Actress Phoebe Cates is 47. Country singer Craig Morgan is 46. Actor Daryl “Chill’’ Mitchell is 45. Actor Will Ferrell is 43. Actress Rain Pryor is 41. Actor Corey Feldman is 39. Rock musician Ed Kowalczyk (Live) is 39. Rock singer Ryan McCombs (Drowning Pool) is 36. Actress AnnaLynne McCord is 23. Actor Mark Indelicato is 16. ► In 1790, a site along the Potomac River was designated the permanent seat of the US government; the area became Washington, D.C. ► In 1862, David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the US Navy. ► In 1935, the first parking meters were installed, in Oklahoma City. ► In 1945, the US exploded its first experimental atomic bomb, in the desert of Alamogordo, N.M. ► In 1957, Marine Major John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record by flying a jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds. ► In 1964, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater said “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice’’ and that “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.’’ ► In 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon. ► In 1973, during the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Nixon’s secret taping system. ► In 1980, former California governor Ronald Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Detroit. ► In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died when their single-engine plane, piloted by Kennedy, plunged into the ocean near Martha’s Vineyard. ► In 2000, families and friends of the victims of the TWA Flight 800 explosion broke ground for a new memorial on the Long Island shore not far from where the plane went down, killing all 230 people on board. ► In 2005, a suicide bomber blew up a fuel tanker near a Shiite mosque in Musayyib, Iraq, killing nearly 100 people. More than a week after the London terror bombings, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned that an “evil ideology’’ of Islamic extremism was bent on spreading terror through the West. ► In 2009, saying that civil rights leaders from decades past had paved the way for his election as the nation’s first black commander in chief, President Obama paid homage to the NAACP during a convention in New York, and advised members that their work remained unfinished. In an embarrassing acknowledgement, NASA admitted that in all likelihood, it had recorded over the original videotapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing.