September 16

681 – Pope Honorius I is posthumously excommunicated by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. 1400 – Owain Glyndŵr is declared Prince of Wales by his followers. 1620 – A determined band of 35 religious dissenters – Pilgrims set sail for Virginia from Plymouth, England in the Mayflower, jubilant at the prospect of practicing their unorthodox brand of worship in the New World. 1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the "Old Pretender", becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland. 1732 – In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory and a violent explosion ensues, killing two-thirds of its inhabitants. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Harlem Heights is fought. 1779 – American Revolutionary War: The Franco-American Siege of Savannah begins. 1810 – With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for independence from Spain. 1822 – French 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. 1863 – Robert College, in Istanbul, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist. 1880 – The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York. 1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma. 1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded. 1914 – World War I: The Siege of Przemyśl (present-day Poland) begins. 1920 – The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 and injuring 400. 1940 – World War II: Italian troops conquer Sidi Barrani. 1943 – World War II: The German Tenth Army reports that it can no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno. 1945 – World War II: The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong comes to an end. 1953 – American Airlines Flight 723 crashes in Colonie, New York, killing 28 people.