July 16 in History

In 1054, a quarrel between emissaries of the Roman pope and the patriarch of Constantinople ended in mutual excommunications, an episode traditionally seen as the moment Christianity divided into the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Historians now stress that the break was neither sudden nor complete in 1054, but the date remains a convenient marker for a split that shaped the religious and political map of Europe for nearly a millennium.

On the morning of July 16, 1945, in the desert of south-central New Mexico, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon ever exploded. Code-named Trinity, the test confirmed that a bomb powered by nuclear fission could work, and it opened the nuclear age. Within a month, similar weapons were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the world's politics, warfare, and science were permanently altered.

The Maracanazo was Uruguay's 2-1 victory over Brazil in the deciding match of the 1950 FIFA World Cup, played on 16 July at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil needed only a draw to win its first world title, and the defeat before a vast home crowd became one of the most traumatic moments in the country's sporting history. The name combines the stadium's name with a Portuguese suffix suggesting a blow or disaster.