What happened on July 16 ?

622 - The Prophet Mohammed begins his Hijra from Mecca to Medina. This marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

1661 - The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Bank of Stockholm.

1769 - Father Junipero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first mission in California. The mission later evolves into the city of San Diego.

1779 - American Revolutionary War: United States forces led by General Anthony Wayne capture Stony Point, New York from British troops.

1782 - First performance of Mozart's opera The Abduction from the Seraglio.

1783 - Grants of land in Canada to American United Empire Loyalists are announced.

1790 - The signing of the Residence Bill establishes a site along the Potomac River as the District of Columbia (seat of government).

1862 - American Civil War: David G. Farragut becomes the first United States Navy rear admiral.

1880 - Dr. Emily Howard Stowe becomes the first woman licenced to practice medicine in Canada.

1918 - Russian Revolution: At Ekaterinburg, Bolsheviks execute Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family.

1930 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia signs the first constitution of Ethiopia.

1941 - New York Yankees' Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his 56th consecutive game.

1942 - Holocaust: Rafle du Vel'd'Hiv: The Vichy France government orders French police officers to round up 13,000-20,000 Jews and imprison them in the Winter Velodrome. In 1995, president Jacques Chirac officially recognizes the French police's responsibility.

1945 - Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1951 - The novel Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger published.

1951 - King Léopold III of Belgium abdicates in favour of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium.

1957 - United States Marine Major John Glenn flies a F8U supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds setting a new transcontinental speed record.

1965 - The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France with Italy opens.

1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 11 launches from Cape Kennedy, Florida and will become the first manned space mission to land on the moon.

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

1979 - Iraqi President Hasan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein.

1983 - Sikorsky S-61 disaster: helicopter crash off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities.

1990 - In the Philippines, an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter Scale kills over 1600.

1993 - Slackware 1.00 is released.

1994 - The planet Jupiter is hit by fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet.

1994 - The civil war in Rwanda ends.

1997 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 63.17 to close at 8,038.88, closing above 8,000 for the first time.

1999 - John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The Piper Saratoga aircraft was piloted by Kennedy.

2001 - The People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation sign the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation

2001 - The FBI arrests Dmitry Sklyarov at a convention in Las Vegas, Nevada for violating a provision of the DMCA.

2003 - The Corsicans reject a referendum for increased autonomy from France by a very thin majority: 50.98 percent against, and 49.02 percent for.

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

2004 - Barclays Bank freezes the bank accounts of the British National Party.

2004 - A fire at a private school in Kumbakonam, India kills over 90 children.