July 16

Cardinal Humbert, a legate of Pope Leo IX, laid a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia, an act tied to the East-West Schism.

Pope Innocent III, among the most influential medieval popes, died at Perugia and was buried in the city's cathedral.

Pope Gregory IX canonized Francis of Assisi at Assisi, less than two years after the friar's death.

Jack Kornfield, an American teacher who helped bring Theravada insight (vipassana) meditation to Western audiences and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society, was born in 1945.

In the New Mexico desert the Manhattan Project detonated the first nuclear device, code-named Trinity, opening the atomic age; J. Robert Oppenheimer led the scientific effort.

On 16 July 1969, a Saturn V rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on the first mission to land people on the Moon.