In 1945, the United States successfully detonated a test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, N.M., an event now considered to mark the beginning of the Atomic Age.
In 1951, J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" was published.
In 1979, Saddam Hussein became the president of Iraq.
In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., along with his wife and sister-in-law, died in a private plane crash near Martha's Vineyard, M…