TODAY IN HISTORY - JULY 16TH

1790 – The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.

1882 – Mary Todd Lincoln, American wife of Abraham Lincoln, 19th First Lady of the United States (b. 1818) dies.

1887 – Shoeless Joe Jackson, American baseball player and manager (d. 1951) is born.

1907 – Orville Redenbacher, American farmer and businessman, founded Orville Redenbacher's (d. 1995) is born.

1935 – The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1941 – Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as a MLB record.

1951 – The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is published for the first time, by Little, Brown and Company.

1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; due to changing economics all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas.

1965 – The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1973 – Watergate scandal: Former White House aide Alexander Butterfield informs the United States Senate that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.

1981 – Harry Chapin, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1942) dies.

1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr., piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, dies when his plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. His wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are also killed.

2004 – Millennium Park, considered Chicago's first and most ambitious early 21st-century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley.

2013 – As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India.

2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.