September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 106 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Christian feast day:
- Grito de Dolores, celebrates the declaration of independence of Mexico from Spain in 1810. See Fiestas Patrias
- Independence Day (Papua New Guinea), celebrates the independence of Papua New Guinea from Australia in 1975.
- International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer
- Malaysia Day (Malaysia, Singapore)
- Martyrs’ Day (Libya)
- Heroes’ Day (Saint Kitts and Nevis)
- National POW/MIA Recognition Day in the United States
- ‘Constitution Day and Citizenship Day’ observed
History
In 307, Emperor Severus II is captured and imprisoned at Tres Tabernae. He is later executed (or forced to commit suicide) after Galerius unsuccessfully invades Italy.
In 681, Pope Honorius I is posthumously excommunicated by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
In 1400, Owain Glyndŵr is declared Prince of Wales by his followers.
In 1620, Pilgrims set sail from England on the Mayflower.
In 1672, Anne Bradstreet, English-American poet (b. 1612) dies in North Andover, Massachusetts at the age of 60. She was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first female writer in England’s North American colonies to be published. She was also a prominent Puritan figure in American Literature.
In a portrait painted by her later poems, Bradstreet is described as ‘an educated English woman, a loving wife, devoted mother, a questing Puritan and a sensitive poet.’
Bradstreet’s first volume of poetry was The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, published in 1650. It was met with a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World.
In 1701, James II of England (b. 1633) dies of a brain haemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. James’s heart was placed in a silver-gilt locket and given to the convent at Chaillot, and his brain was placed in a lead casket and given to the Scots College in Paris. His entrails were placed in two gilt urns and sent to the parish church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the English Jesuit college at Saint-Omer, while the flesh from his right arm was given to the English Augustinian nuns of Paris.
James’s body was laid to rest in a triple sarcophagus (consisting of two wooden coffins and one of lead) at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, with a funeral oration by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette.[133] James was not buried, but put in one of the side chapels.
He was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685 until he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Roman Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England,Scotland and Ireland.
In 1701, James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the “Old Pretender”, becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.
In 1732, In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory and a violent explosion ensues, killing two thirds of its inhabitants.
In 1776, American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Harlem Heights is fought.
In 1779, American Revolutionary War: The Franco-American Siege of Savannah begins. The year before, the city of Savannah, Georgia, had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell. The siege itself consisted of a joint Franco-American attempt to retake Savannah, from September 16 to October 18, 1779. On October 9 a major assault against the British siege works failed. During the attack, Polish nobleman Count Casimir Pulaski, leading the combined cavalry forces on the American side, was mortally wounded. With the failure of the joint attack, the siege was abandoned, and the British remained in control of Savannah until July 1782, near the end of the war.
In 1795, The first occupation by United Kingdom of Cape Colony, South Africa with the Battle of Hout Bay, after successive victories at the Battle of Muizenberg and Wynberg, after William V requested protection against revolutionary France’s occupation of the Netherlands.
In 1810, With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain.
In 1812, The Fire of Moscow begins shortly after midnight and destroys three quarters of the city days later.
In 1863, Robert College of Istanbul–Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.
In 1880, The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York. The Sun is the nation’s oldest, continuously-independent college daily.
In 1893, Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma.
In 1908, The General Motors Corporation is founded.
In 1919, The American Legion is incorporated.
In 1920, The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 and injuring 400.
In 1940, World War II: Italian troops conquer Sidi Barrani.
In 1941, World War II: Concerned that Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, was about to ally his petroleum-rich empire with Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union invade Iran in late August and force the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In 1943, World War II: The Allied invasion of Italy concludes when Heinrich von Vietinghoff, commander of the German Tenth Army, orders his troops to withdraw from Salerno.
In 1945, World War II: The surrender of the Japanese troops in Hong Kong is accepted by Royal Navy Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt.
In 1947, Typhoon Kathleen hits Saitama, Tokyo and Tone River area, at least 1,930 killed.
In 1955, The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.
In 1955, A Soviet Navy Zulu-class submarine becomes the first submarine to launch a ballistic missile.
In 1959, The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.
In 1961, The United States National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury.
In 1961, Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
In 1963, Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. However, Singapore soon leaves this new country.
In 1966, The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber‘s opera Antony and Cleopatra.
In 1970, King Hussein of Jordan declares military rule following the hijacking of four civilian airliners by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This results in the formation of the Black September Palestinian paramilitary unit. This was a Palestinian militant organization founded in 1970. Besides other actions, the group was responsible for the assassination of the Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Tal, and the Munich massacre, in which eleven Israeli athletes and officials were kidnapped and killed, as well as a West German policeman losing his life, during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, their most publicized event. These attacks led to the creation or specialization of permanent counter-terrorism forces in many European countries.
In 1975, Papua New Guinea gains independence from Australia.
In 1975, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe join the United Nations.
In 1975, The first prototype of the Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.
In 1976, Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from the trolleybus that had fallen into Yerevan reservoir.
In 1978, An earthquake measuring 7.5 to 7.9 on the Richter scale hits the city of Tabas, Iran killing about 25,000 people.
In 1980, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines join the United Nations.
In 1982, 1982 Lebanon War: the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon takes place.
In 1987, The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.
In 1990, The railroad between the People’s Republic of China and Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.
In 1992, The trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega ends in the United States with a 40-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.
In 1992, Black Wednesday: The pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark.
In 1994, The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin and Irish paramilitary groups in 1988.
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane.
In 2005, The Camorra organized crime boss Paolo Di Lauro is arrested in Naples, Italy.
In 2007, One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people.
In 2007, Mercenaries working for Blackwater Worldwide shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad; all criminal charges against them are later dismissed, however they are later tried and convicted of the crime.
In 2013, A gunman kills twelve people at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
In 2014, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launches its Kobani offensive against Syrian–Kurdish forces.
In 2015, Allan Wright, English captain and pilot (b. 1920) dies. He was a Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot and flying ace of the Second World War. Wright scored 11 kills, three shared kills, five probable kills and seven damaged against the German Luftwaffe, and was one of the last surviving airmen called The Few who served in the Battle of Britain.
During the Battle of Britain he shared a Heinkel He 111 destroyed on 14 August, a Heinkel He 111 of Kampfgeschwader 27 (KG 27) at night over Bristol on 29 August, a Heinkel He 111 and Messerschmitt Bf 109 ‘probable’ on 11 September, a Messerschmitt Bf 109 damaged on the 14th, a Messerschmitt Bf 109 ‘probable’ on the 15th, a Junkers Ju 88 ‘probable’ on the 19th, a Dornier Do 17 on the 26th, a Junkers Ju 88 on the 27th, and two Messerschmitt Bf 109’s on the 30th. On 30 September he was shot down and wounded near Brighton by a Messerschmitt Bf 109 of Jagdgeschwader 27 (JG 27) and hospitalised. The award of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) was made on 22 October 1940. On 6 December 1940 he destroyed a Messerschmitt Bf 109.
By July 1941 Wright had received a Bar to the DFC. He was posted to 59 OTU (Operational Training Unit) RAF in July 1941. Service with RAF Fighter Command HQ and as an instructor followed until being posted to No. 29 Squadron RAF at RAF West Malling in March 1943, where as a night fighter he had his last confirmed kill – a Junkers Ju 88 on 3 April.
For the remainder of the war, Wright worked on training and fighter tactics. He became chief instructor at the Pilot Gunnery Instructor Wing of the Central Gunner School, and later commanded the Air Fighting Developing Unit (AFDU) at RAF Wittering. In early 1945, Wright was transferred to RAF El Bellah in Egypt where commanded the fighter wing of the Middle East Advanced Bombing and Gunnery School.
Remaining in the RAF post-war, he retired as a group captain on 12 February 1967.
In 2019, Five months before the COVID-19 stock market crash, an overnight spike in lending rates in the United States prompts the Federal Reserve to conduct operations in the repo market.
In 2021, A 6.0 Mw earthquake strikes Lu County, Sichuan, China, killing three and injuring more than 88.