September 16 birthdays & history

Famous people born on September 16

• 1923Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporean lawyer and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Singapore
• 1924Lauren Bacall, American actress
• 1925B.B. King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
• 1888Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Finnish author, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1893Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian-American physiologist and biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1956David Copperfield, American magician and actor
• 1992Nick Jonas, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1952Mickey Rourke, American boxer and actor
• 1971Amy Poehler, American actress, comedian, and producer
• 1981Fan Bingbing, Chinese actress, singer, and producer

What happened on September 16

• 1822French 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.
• 1844Felix Mendelssohn completed the score of his Violin Concerto, his final concerto.
• 1863Robert College, in Istanbul, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.
• 1880The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York.
• 1893Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma.
• 1908The General Motors Corporation is founded.
• 1956TCN-9 Sydney is the first Australian television station to commence regular broadcasts.
• 1959The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.
• 1961Pakistan establishes its Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission with Abdus Salam as its head.
• 1963Malaysia was formed as an independent nation from the Federation of Malaya, the State of Singapore, the Crown Colony of North Borneo, and the Crown Colony of Sarawak.
• 1979Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.
• 1989During a tour of the United States, Soviet politician Boris Yeltsin visited a grocery store in Texas that had a major impact on his views regarding the Soviet Union's economic system.

Also observed on September 16

• Cry of Dolores, celebrates the declaration of independence of Mexico from Spain in 1810. See Fiestas Patrias
• Independence Day (Papua New Guinea), celebrates the independence of Papua New Guinea from Australia in 1975.
• International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer
• Malaysian Armed Forces Day (Malaysia)
• Malaysia Day (Malaysia)
• National Heroes Day (Saint Kitts and Nevis)