TODAY HISTORY IN
Today is Friday, Sept. 16, the 259th day of 2022. There are 106 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlights in History:
On Sept. 16, 2001, President George W. Bush, speaking on the South Lawn of the White House, said there was “no question” Osama bin Laden and his followers were the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks; Bush pledged the government would “find them, get them running and hunt them down.”
On this date:
• In 1630, the Massachusetts village of Shawmut changed its name to Boston.
• In 1810, Mexico began its revolt against Spanish rule.
• In 1908, General Motors was founded in Flint, Michigan, by William C. Durant.
• In 1940, Samuel T. Rayburn of Texas was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
• In 1966, the Metropolitan Opera officially opened its new opera house at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”
• In 1972, “The Bob Newhart Show” premiered on CBS.
• In 1974, President Gerald R. Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam war deserters and draft-evaders.
• In 1982, the massacre of between 1,200 and 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children at the hands of Israeli-allied Christian Phalange militiamen began in west Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
• In 1987, two dozen countries signed the Montreal Protocol, a treaty designed to save the Earth’s ozone layer by calling on nations to reduce emissions of harmful chemicals by the year 2000.
• In 2007, contractors for the U.S. security firm Blackwater USA guarding a U.S. State Department convoy in Baghdad opened fire on civilian vehicles, mistakenly believing they were under attack; 14 Iraqis died. O.J. Simpson was arrested in the alleged armed robbery of sports memorabilia collectors in Las Vegas. (Simpson was later convicted of kidnapping and armed robbery and sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was released in 2017.)
• In 2013, Aaron Alexis, a former U.S. Navy reservist, went on a shooting rampage inside the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12 people before being shot dead by police.
• In 2016, after five years of promoting a false conspiracy theory about Barack Obama’s birthplace, Republican Donald Trump abruptly reversed course, acknowledging that the president was born in America, but then claiming the “birther movement” was begun by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. (While the question of Obama’s birthplace was raised by some backers of Clinton’s primary campaign against Obama eight years earlier, Clinton had long denounced it as a “racist lie.”)
Ten years ago: In appearances on Sunday news shows, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said there was no evidence that the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, was premeditated. But Libya’s interim president, Mohammed el-Megarif, told CBS he had no doubt attackers spent months planning the assault and purposely chose the date, September 11.
Five years ago: Tropical Storm Maria, which would batter the Caribbean as a powerful hurricane, formed in the Atlantic. California lawmakers voted to move the state’s presidential primary up by about three months to March, a move that would force candidates to mount expensive campaigns earlier.
One year ago: Health officials said the state of Florida had surpassed 50,000 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic. A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked the COVID-19 pandemic to an “alarming” increase in obesity in U.S. children and teenagers. A report published in JAMA Ophthalmology suggested that vision problems increased among Chinese schoolchildren during pandemic restrictions and online learning. Jane Powell, a star of Hollywood’s golden age musicals, died at her Connecticut home at 92.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Janis Paige is 100. Actor George Chakiris is 90. Bluesman Billy Boy Arnold is 87. Movie director Jim McBride is 81. Actor Linda Miller is
80. R&B singer Betty Kelley (Martha & the Vandellas) is
78. Musician Kenney Jones (Small Faces; Faces; The Who) is 74. Actor Susan Ruttan is 74. Rock musician Ron Blair (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers; Mudcrutch) is 74. Actor Ed Begley Jr. is
73. Country singer David Bellamy (The Bellamy Brothers) is 72. Actor Mickey Rourke is 70.