THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― SEPTEMBER 16

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. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Monday or Tuesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Thursday or Saturday (56).

MAYFLOWER DAY  


1620 – The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists–half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs–had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the "Pilgrims" reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.

1630 – The village of Shawmut changes it's name to Boston. Boston's early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine (after its "three mountains"—only traces of which remain today) but later renamed it Boston afterBoston, Lincolnshire, England, from which several prominent colonists had come. The renaming, on September 7, 1630 (old style), was by Puritan colonists from England, who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest of fresh water. Their settlement was initially limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The peninsula is known to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC.

1782 – The Great Seal of United States was used for first time. It was impressed on document to negotiate a prisoner of war agreement with the British. It was the first official use of the impression.

1893 – On this day in 1893, the largest land rush in history begins with more than 100,000 people pouring into the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma to claim valuable land that had once belonged to Native Americans in what is known as the Oklahoma Land Rush. With a single shot from a pistol the mad dash began, and land-hungry pioneers on horseback and in carriages raced forward to stake their claims to the best acres.

1940 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service and Training Act, which requires all male citizens between the ages of 26 and 35 to register for the military draft, beginning on October 16. The act had been passed by Congress 10 days earlier. Another thing you probably thought a Republican started.

1960 – Amos Alonzo Stagg retires as a football coach at 98. He coached from 1890 to 1958 compiling a career coaching record of 314–199–35. He was also 266–158–3 coaching college baseball. Today the NCAA Division III football championship game is named the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl.

1974 –President Gerald Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for draft-evaders and deserters during the Vietnam War. 

1975 – The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs 22-0. Pirate's second baseman, Rennie Stennett, becomes the third player in MLB history to go 7 for 7 hitting in a nine-inning game.

1986 – Fire in Kinross gold mine, Transvaal South Africa, 177 mineworkers were killed in one of South Africa's worst mine disasters since 1946. An acetylene tank sparked flames that swept through the mining tunnel igniting plastic covering on the wiring. The flames also set fire to polyurethane foam that is used to keep walls in the mine dry). The burning plastic combined with polyurethane and churned toxic fumes that filled the shafts, choking the miners to death.

2013 – A 34-year-old man goes on a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., killing 12 people and wounding several others over the course of an hour before he is fatally shot by police. Investigators later determined that the gunman, Aaron Alexis, a computer contractor for a private information technology firm, had acted alone.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1777 – Nathan Mayer Rothschild, German-English banker and financier (d. 1836)

1875 – James Cash Penney, American businessman and philanthropist, founded J. C. Penney (d. 1971)

1891 – Karl Dönitz, German admiral and politician, President of Germany after Hitler's death (d. 1980)

1925 – B.B. King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2015)

1942 – Susan L. Graham, American computer scientist and academic, winner of the EEE John von Neumann Medal 

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.