On July 16

At least 23 students died and dozens more fell ill at a primary school in the Indian state of Bihar after consuming a Midday Meal that was contaminated with pesticide.

A tainted milk powder scandal broke in China which ultimately involved an estimated 300,000 victims, the vast majority infants, with 54,000 hospitalized with kidney problems and six deaths.

An earthquake of magnitude .mw-parser-output .tooltip-dotted{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}Mw6.6 struck Niigata Prefecture, Japan, causing a leak of radioactive gases from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant.

Millennium Park, a public park in Chicago, Illinois, and one of the world's largest rooftop gardens, opened to the public.

Fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 began colliding with the planet Jupiter , with the first impact causing a fireball that reached a peak temperature of 24,000 kelvin.

A 7.8 MS earthquake struck the densely populated Philippine island of Luzon, killing an estimated 1,621 people.

A Sikorsky S-61 helicopter operated by British Airways crashed in thick fog in the Celtic Sea, killing 20 of the 26 people on board.

South Vietnamese Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo (pictured)—an undetected communist spy—was reported dead due to injuries sustained during his capture, but it is generally assumed he was killed on the orders of military officials.

The Catcher in the Rye, an American coming-of-age novel by J. D. Salinger, was first published (cover pictured).

Uruguay won the decisive match of the FIFA World Cup against Brazil 2–1 at Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro.

Korean War: A Korean People's Army unit massacred 31 prisoners of war of the U.S. Army on a mountain near the village of Tuman.

The United States conducted the first detonation of a nuclear weapon during the Trinity test (pictured).

Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie promulgated the nation's first modern constitution.

Max Reger's Hebbel Requiem was first performed in a memorial concert for the composer, conducted by Philipp Wolfrum.

President George Washington signed the Residence Act, selecting a new permanent site along the Potomac River for the capital of the United States, which later became Washington, D.C.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail premiered in Vienna, after which Emperor Joseph II anecdotally remarked that it had "too many notes".

The ten-year-old Richard II was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.

Muhammad ibn Yusuf, who later established the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim state in Spain, was elected the ruler of Arjona.