Today in History: Trinity nuclear weapon test
In 1862, Flag Officer David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the US Navy.
In 1945, the United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, N.M.; the same day, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California on a secret mission to deliver atomic bomb components to Tinian Island in the Marianas.
In 1951, the novel 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger was first published by Little, Brown and Co.
In 1957, Marine Corps Major John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record by flying a Vought F8U Crusader jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8.4 seconds.
In 1964, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater declared that 'extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice' and that 'moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.'
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In 1969, Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.
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 Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard.
In 2004, Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement by a federal judge in New York for lying about a stock sale.
In 2008, Florida resident Casey Anthony, whose 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, had been missing a month, was arrested on charges of child neglect, making false official statements and obstructing a criminal investigation. (Casey Anthony was later acquitted at trial of murdering Caylee, whose skeletal remains were found in December 2008; Casey was convicted of lying to police.)
In 2015, a jury in Centennial, Colo., convicted James Holmes of 165 counts of murder, attempted murder and other charges in the 2012 Aurora movie theater rampage that left 12 people dead.
In 2017, 10 people died at a popular swimming hole in Arizona's Tonto National Forest after a rainstorm unleashed a flash flood.
In 2018, after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, President Trump openly questioned the finding of his own intelligence agencies that Russia had meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to his benefit. (Trump said a day later that he misspoke.)
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Newsweek
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