September 16
Today is
Stay Away From Seattle Day in the United States.
1620 –
Pilgrims set sail from England on the
Mayflower.
1732– In
Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory and a violent explosion ensues, killing two thirds of its inhabitants.
1810 – With the
Grito de Dolores,
Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for
independence from Spain.
1863 –
Robert College of Istanbul-Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by
Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.
1880 – The
Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York. The Sun is the nation's oldest, continuously-independent college daily.
1908 –
General Motors Corporation is founded.
1919 – The
American Legion is incorporated.
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.
1955 – The military coup to unseat President
Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.
1956 –
TCN-9 Sydney is the first Australian television station to commence regular broadcasts.
1959 – The first successful photocopier, the
Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.
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.
1961 –
Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone (one-minute sustained winds of 215 mph (345 km/h)), makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
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.
1970 -
Jimi Hendrix joined
Eric Burdon on stage at
Ronnie Scott's in London for what would become the guitarist's last ever public appearance.
1975 – The first prototype of the
Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.
1977 - 29-year-old former
T. Rex singer
Marc Bolan was killed instantly when the car driven by his girlfriend,
Gloria Jones, left the road and hit a tree in Barnes, London. Miss Jones broke her jaw in the accident. The couple were on the way to Bolan's home in Richmond after a night out at a Mayfair restaurant. A local man who witnessed the crash said, "When I arrived a girl was lying on the bonnet and a man with long dark curly hair was stretched out in the road - there was a hell of a mess."
1979 -
The Sugarhill Gang's '
Rapper's Delight' was released. While it was not the first single to feature rapping, it is generally considered to be the song that first popularized hip hop in the United States and around the world. The song's opening lyric "I said a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip hip hop" is world-renowned.
1987 – The
Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the
ozone layer from depletion.
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.
2004 –
Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane.
2007 – Mercenaries working for
Blackwater Worldwide shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad.
2013 – A gunman
kills twelve people at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C..
Births
1875 – J. C. Penney; 1877 – Jacob Schick (yeah, the razor guy); 1880 – Alfred Noyes; 1886 – Jean Arp
; 1888 – W. O. Bentley (yeah,
that Bentley); 1891 – Karl Dönitz; 1898 – H. A. Rey (co-created
Curious George); 1911 – Paul Henning (created
The Beverly Hillbillies,
Petticoat Junction, &
Green Acres, wrote
The Ballad Of Jed Clampett); 1914 – Allen Funt (Candid Camera); 1920 – Art Sansom (created comic strip
The Born Loser); 1924 – Lauren Bacall;
1925 – B.B. King
; 1926 – Robert H. Schuller; 1927 – Peter Falk (
Columbo), Jack Kelly ('Bart Maverick' on
Maverick); 1930 – Anne Francis (
Forbidden Planet, Honey West); 1934 – George Chakiris (leader of The Sharks in the film version of
West Side Story); 1941 - Joe Butler♪ ♫(The Lovin' Spoonful); 1942 – Bernie Calvert
(The Hollies); 1948 - Ron Blair
(Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers); 1949 – Ed Begley Jr.; 1950 – David Bellamy♪ ♫(The Bellamy Bros.); 1952 – Mickey Rourke; 1954 – Earl Klugh
; 1956 – David Copperfield; 1958 – Jennifer Tilly
; 1963 – Richard Marx♪ ♫; 1964 – Dave Sabo
(Skid Row), Molly Shannon; 1971 – Amy Poehler; 1974 – Julian Castro; 1975 – Jason Leffler
; 1979 – Flo Rida♪ ♫; 1981 – Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls); 1992 - Nick Jonas♪ ♫(The Jonas Bros.)
Deaths
1736 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (invented the thermometer); 1965 – Fred Quimby (producer
Tom & Jerry); 1977 – Marc Bolan
(T. Rex), 1977 – Maria Callas♪ ♫; 1996 – McGeorge Bundy; 2001 – Samuel Z. Arkoff; 2002 – James Gregory ('Inspector Luger' on
Barney Miller); 2003 – Sheb Wooley♪ ♫; 2009 - Mary Travers♪ ♫(Peter Paul & Mary)