Today is Saturday, July 16, the 198th day of 2016. There are 168 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1790, a site along the Potomac River was designated the permanent seat of the United States government; the area became Washington, D.C.

In 1862, Flag Officer David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the United States Navy.

In 1912, New York gambler Herman Rosenthal, set to testify before a grand jury about police corruption, was gunned down by members of the Lennox Avenue Gang.

In 1935, the world’s first parking meters were installed in Oklahoma City.

In 1945, the United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico; 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 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.”

In 1970, Three Rivers Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pittsburgh Pirates, officially opened as the Pirates lost to the Cincinnati Reds 3-2. (The stadium was demolished in 2001.)

In 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.