What happened today
1978
Famous birthdays
1925
Get history's greatest tales
Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! newsletter for a blast from the past each week in your inbox.
more events on September 16
-
2007
Military contractors in the employ of Blackwater Worldwide allegedly kill 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, further straining relations between the US and the people of Iraq.
-
1994
Britain’s government lifts the 1988 broadcasting ban against member of Ireland’s Sinn Fein and Irish paramilitary groups.
-
1991
The trial of Manuel Noriega, deposed dictator of Panama, begins in the United States.
-
1978
An earthquake estimated to be as strong as 7.9 on the Richter scale kills 25,000 people in Iran.
-
1975
Administrators for Rhodes Scholarships announce the decision to begin offering fellowships to women.
-
1974
Limited amnesty is offered to Vietnam-era draft resisters who would now swear allegiance to the United States and perform two years of public service.
-
1972
South Vietnamese troops recapture Quang Tri province in South Vietnam from the North Vietnamese Army.
-
1956
David Copperfield, magician.
-
1954
Earl Klugh, jazz guitarist.
-
1952
Mickey Rourke, actor, screenwriter, professional boxer; won Golden Globe (The Wrestler, 2009).
-
1950
Henry Louis Gates Jr., critic and scholar.
-
The U.S. 8th Army breaks out of the Pusan Perimeter in South Korea and begins heading north to meet MacArthur’s troops heading south from Inchon.
-
1948
Rosemary Casals, pro tennis player whose efforts to gain greater equality for women in the sport led to many changes.
-
1945
Japan surrenders Hong Kong to Britain.
-
1943
James Alan McPherson, author; first African American to win Pulitzer Prize for fiction (Elbow Room, 1978).