ON SEPTEMBER 16 ...
In 1630 the village of Shawmut, Mass., changed its name to Boston.
In 1810 Mexicans began their revolt against Spanish rule.
In 1857 the song “Jingle Bells” by James Pierpont was copyrighted under its original title, “One Horse Open Sleigh.” (The song, while considered a Christmastime classic, was actually written for Thanksgiving.)
In 1893 hundreds of thousands of settlers rushed onto a section of land between Oklahoma and Kansas known as the Cherokee Strip.
In 1908 General Motors was founded in Flint, Mich., by William C. Durant.
In 1919 the American Legion was incorporated by an act of Congress.
In 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the nation’s first peacetime military draft.
In 1974 President Gerald Ford offered conditional amnesty to Vietnam War draft evaders and deserters.
In 1976 the Episcopal Church, at its General Convention in Minneapolis, formally approved the ordination of women as priests and bishops.
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.
In 1994 a federal jury in Anchorage ordered Exxon Corp. to pay $5 billion in punitive damages to commercial fishermen, Alaskan natives, property owners and others harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March 1989.
In 1999 Hurricane Floyd hit the Carolinas and began making its way up the East Coast, damaging 12,000 homes and claiming more than 50 lives even after it weakened to a tropical storm.
In 2007 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’s due to be released on parole in October 2017.)
In 2008 the Federal Reserve announced it would pump $85 billion into insurance giant AIG in exchange for an 80 percent stake in the company.
In 2011 a World War II-era P-51 Mustang plunged into spectators at the National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nev., killing 11 people, including pilot Jimmy Leeward.
In 2013 Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old contractor with a history of mental problems, shot and killed 12 people before being gunned down during a police shootout at the Washington Navy Yard.
In 2015 at least 193 people were killed when a tanker truck carrying gasoline crashed and exploded outside the town of Maridi in South Sudan.
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.”)