July 16

1945 – The "Atomic Age" begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico, code named "The Manhattan Project."
1969 – Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1994 – The comet "Shoemaker-Levy 9" is destroyed in a head-on collision with Jupiter. This provided the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects.