September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 106 days remain until the end of the year.
Pre-1600 681 – Pope Honorius I is posthumously excommunicated by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
1400 – Owain Glyndŵr is declared Prince of Wales by his followers.
1601–1900 1620 – Pilgrims set sail for Virginia from Plymouth, England in the Mayflower.[1] 1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the 'Old Pretender', becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland on the death of his father, James II.[2] 1732 – In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory and a violent explosion ensues, killing twothirds of its inhabitants. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: American forces win the Battle of Harlem Heights after General George Washington orders a counterattack on advancing British light infantry.[3] 1779 – American Revolutionary War: The Franco-American Siege of Savannah begins.
1810 – With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for independence from Spain.
1822 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a 'note' read to the Academy of Sciences, reports a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster's hypothesis that photoelasticity (as it is now known) is stress-induced birefringence.[ 4] 1863 – Robert College, in Istanbul, 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.
1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma.
1901–present 1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.
1914 – World War I: The Siege of Przemyśl (present-day Poland) begins.
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.
1940 – World War II: Italian troops conquer Sidi Barrani.
1943 – World War II: The German Tenth Army reports that it can no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno.
1945 – World War II: The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong comes to an end.
1953 – American Airlines Flight 723 crashes in Colonie, New York, killing 28 people.[ 5] 1955 – The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.
1955 – A Soviet Zuluclass submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.
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, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
1961 – Pakistan establishes its Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission with Abdus Salam as its head.