On This Day: Saturday July 16, 2005 This is the 197th day of the year, with 168 days remaining in 2005.
Fact of the Day: Amundsen
Roald Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer who was the first person to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean via the Northwest Passage (1903-05). He discovered the South Pole on December 14, 1911, and flew over the North Pole in a dirigible in 1926. Amundsen was one of the first to cross the Arctic by air. He then flew, in 1928, on a daring rescue trip to find survivors of an Italian Arctic expedition (led by Umberto Nobile), but the trip was doomed and no trace of the rescue party or airplane was ever found.
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.
Ukraine: Independence 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 United States 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.
Births 1821 - Mary Baker Eddy, religious leader, founder of Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist).
1872 - Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, first to reach the South Pole.
