Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/September 16

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 * 1776 – American Revolutionary War: American colonists defeated British troops at the Battle of Harlem Heights (depicted) on the island of Manhattan.
 * 1822 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a "note" read to the Academy of Sciences, reported a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster's hypothesis that photoelasticity (as we now call it) is stress-induced birefringence.
 * 1920 – A bomb in a horse-drawn wagon exploded in front of 23 Wall Street in New York City, killing 38 people and injuring several hundred others.
 * 1940 – Second World War: Italian forces captured the town of Sidi Barrani, but their invasion of Egypt progressed no further.
 * 1961 – Typhoon Nancy, which possibly had the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, made landfall in Muroto, Japan.
 * 1961 – The U.S. National Hurricane Research Project sought to weaken Hurricane Esther by seeding it with silver iodide, leading to the establishment of Project Stormfury.
 * 1975 – The prototype of the Mikoyan MiG-31 (example pictured), one of the fastest combat jets in the world, made its maiden flight.
 * 1979 – Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.
 * 1982 – A Lebanese militia under the direct command of Elie Hobeika carried out a massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Shatila, killing at least 460 civilians.
 * 1992 – The British pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, and suffered a major devaluation.
 * 2007 – Seventeen Iraqi civilians were shot and killed by Academi guards in Baghdad.
 * 2013 – A lone gunman fatally shot twelve people and injured three others at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C.
 * Born/died: | Philip III of Navarre |d|1343| Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit |d|1736| Mikhail Kutuzov |b|1745| Louis XVIII |d|1824| Miriam Benjamin |b|1861| Nadia Boulanger |b|1887| Lauren Bacall |b|1924| Karen Muir |b|1952| Ahn Eak-tai |d|1965 Louis Réard |d|1984| Katie Melua |b|1984| Millicent Fenwick |d|1992

September 16


 * 681 – At the Third Council of Constantinople, Pope Honorius I was posthumously excommunicated, with his support for monothelitism deemed to be heretical.
 * 1844 – Felix Mendelssohn completed the score of the Violin Concerto, his final concerto.
 * 1963 – Malaysia was formed as an independent nation from the Federation of Malaya, the Colony of Singapore, the Crown Colony of North Borneo, and the Crown Colony of Sarawak.
 * 1979 – Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.
 * 1990 – Construction of the Northern Xinjiang railway (terminus pictured) was completed between Ürümqi South and Alashankou, linking the railway lines of China and Kazakhstan and adding a sizeable portion to the Eurasian Land Bridge.