What Happened on September 16th in History
30 historical events on this date
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.
Hurricane Esther was the first large tropical cyclone to be discovered by satellite imagery. The fifth tropical cyclone, named storm, and hurricane of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season, Esther...
Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
Super Typhoon Nancy, also known as the 2nd Muroto Typhoon , was an extremely powerful tropical cyclone of the 1961 Pacific typhoon season and one of the most intense tropical cyclones on record. The...
Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. However, Singapore is soon expelled from this new country.
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular...
The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra.
The Metropolitan Opera House is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Part of Lincoln Center, the theater was designed by Wallace...
King Hussein of Jordan declares war against the Palestine Liberation Organization, the conflict came to be known as Black September.
Hussein bin Talal was King of Jordan from 1952 until his death in 1999. A member of the Hashemite dynasty, he is regarded as a 40th-generation direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Papua New Guinea gains independence from Australia.
Papua New Guinea (PNG), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in...
Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe join the United Nations.
Cape Verde, in Portuguese Cabo Verde, in Cape Verdean Creole Kabu Verdi, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelagic country in the central Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa....
The first prototype of the Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.
The Mikoyan MiG-31 is a supersonic interceptor aircraft developed for the Soviet Air Forces by the Mikoyan design bureau as a replacement for the MiG-25 "Foxbat", on which it is based and shares...
Armenian champion swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into a Yerevan reservoir.
Shavarsh Vladimiri (Vladimirovich) Karapetyan is a Soviet-Armenian former finswimmer. He was best known for saving the lives of 20 people in a 1976 incident in Yerevan.
Night of the Pencils: In the city of La Plata, Argentina, a group of high-school students were kidnapped and later tortured, raped and murdered during the Argentinian military dictatorship
The Night of the Pencils, was a series of kidnappings and forced disappearances, followed by the torture, rape, and murder of 10 high-school students that began on the evening of 16 September 1976...
The 7.4 Mw Tabas earthquake affects the city of Tabas, Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 15,000 people are killed.
The 1978 Tabas earthquake occurred on September 16 at 19:05:55 local time in central Iran. The shock measured 7.4 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX+ (Violent)....
Eight people escape from East Germany to the west in a homemade hot air balloon.
On 16 September 1979, eight people from two families escaped from East Germany by crossing the border into West Germany at night in a homemade hot air balloon. The unique feat was the result of over...
Lebanon War: The Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon takes place.
The 1982 Lebanon War, also called the Second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks...
The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.
The Montreal Protocol, officially the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of...
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.
Dostyk or Druzhba is a small town in Kazakhstan's Jetisu Region, on the border with Xinjiang, China. It is a port of entry from China. The rail portion serves as an important link in the Eurasian...
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.
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was a Panamanian military officer and politician who was the de facto ruler of Panama from 1983 to 1989. He never officially served as president of Panama, instead...
Black Wednesday: The British pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark.
Black Wednesday, or the 1992 sterling crisis, was a financial crisis that occurred on 16 September 1992 when the UK Government was forced to withdraw pound sterling (GBP) from the (first) European...
The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin and Irish paramilitary groups in 1988.
From October 1988 to September 1994 the British government banned broadcasts of the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin and ten other Irish republican and loyalist groups on television and...
Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-79 to dock with the Russian space station Mir.
Space Shuttle Atlantis is a retired Space Shuttle orbiter vehicle which belongs to NASA, the spaceflight and space exploration agency of the United States. Atlantis was manufactured by the Rockwell...
Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane.
Hurricane Ivan was a large, long-lived, and devastating tropical cyclone that caused widespread damage in the Caribbean and United States. The ninth named storm, the sixth hurricane, and the fourth...
The Camorra organized crime boss Paolo Di Lauro is arrested in Naples, Italy.
The Camorra is an Italian Mafia-type criminal organization and criminal society originating in the region of Campania. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating to...
One-Two-Go Airlines Flight 269 carrying 130 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand, killing 90 people.
One-Two-Go Airlines Flight 269 (OG269) was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Bangkok to Phuket, Thailand. On 16 September 2007, about 15:41 ICT, the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 operating the...
Security guards working for Blackwater Worldwide shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad.
The Nisour Square massacre occurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, which was a private military company contracted by the United States government to...
A gunman kills twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
The Washington Navy Yard shooting occurred on September 16, 2013, when 34-year-old Aaron Alexis fatally shot 12 people and injured three others in a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Naval...
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launches its Kobani offensive against Syrian–Kurdish forces.
The siege of Kobanî was launched by the Islamic State (IS) on 13 September 2014, in order to capture the Kobanî Canton and its main city of Kobanî in northern Syria, in the de facto autonomous...
A 8.3 Mw earthquake strikes the Chilean city of Illapel, killing 15 people, injuring at least 34, leaving at least six missing, and causing extensive damage. One person also dies in Argentina.
The 2015 Illapel earthquake occurred 46 km (29 mi) offshore from Illapel on 16 September 2015 at 19:54:32 Chile Standard Time (22:54:32 UTC), with a moment magnitude of 8.3–8.4. The initial quake...
A 6.0 Mw earthquake strikes Lu County, Sichuan, China, killing three and injuring more than 88.
The 2021 Luxian earthquake was a damaging seismic event occurring in the early hours of September 16 at 04:33 China Standard Time. The surface-wave magnitude (Ms ) 6.0 or moment magnitude (Mw ) 5.4...
Inspiration4, the first private orbital crewed spaceflight, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center.
Inspiration4 was a 2021 human spaceflight operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. The mission launched the Crew Dragon Resilience on September 16, 2021, at 00:02:56 UTC...
During the Let Yet Kone massacre, the Burmese military kills 13 villagers, including eight children, after attacking a school in Sagaing Region, Myanmar.
The Let Yet Kone massacre was a mass killing of civilians on 16 September 2022, at a monastic school in the village of Let Yet Kone, near Tabayin in Sagaing Region, in north-western Myanmar. During...
The death of Mahsa Amini occurred in Tehran, Iran, sparking worldwide protests.
On 16 September 2022, 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina Amini, died in a hospital in Tehran, Iran, under suspicious circumstances. The Guidance Patrol, the religious...