Tomas de Torquemada inquisitor who burned 10,000 people, dies.
Sep 16, 1662
Flamsteed sees solar eclipse, 1st known astronomical observation.
Sep 16, 1810
Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla summoned the largely Indian and mestizo congregation of his small Dolores parish church and urged them to take up arms and fight for Mexico's independence from Spain. His Grito de Delores, or Cry of Dolores, maintained the equality of all races and called for redistribution of land. Mexicans commemorate September 16 as Mexican Independence Day.
Sep 16, 1893
More than 100,000 white settlers swarmed onto a section of land in Oklahoma known as the Cherokee Strip.
Sep 16 1920
A horse-drawn carriage parked at the corner of Wall and Broad streets suddenly explodes just past mid-day. 100 pounds of dynamite hurls 500 pounds of steel shrapnel into a crowd of New Yorkers, killing 40 and wounding almost 300 others. No one is ever charged in the world's first car bombing.
Sep 16, 1940
President Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.
Sep 16, 1966
The Metropolitan Opera opened its new opera house at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Sep 16, 1971
6 Klansmen arrested in connection with bombing of 10 school buses.
Sep 16, 1974
President Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam war deserters and draft-evaders.
Sep 16, 1976
The Episcopal Church, at its General Convention in Minneapolis, formally approved the ordination of women as priests and bishops.
Sep 16, 1978
25,000 die in 7.7 earthquake in Iran.
Sep 16, 1982
The massacre of hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children by Lebanese Christian militiamen began in west Beirut's Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps.
Sep 16, 1990
Iraq televises an 8 minute uncensored speech from George Bush.
Sep 16, 2001
President Bush pledged a crusade against terrorists, saying there was "no question" Osama bin Laden was the "prime suspect" in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sep 16, 2006
President Bush has yet to be impeached and removed from office.
OUR DESTINY SPEAKS BOLDLY, NOT WE
Let destiny speak boldly, loudly, clearly… So its audience might hear. Let me speak plainly with a bard’s tongue; "We are bursting; heavyhearted of war."
The place of our end marches not with our beginning; Crashing planets were not man’s doing, Creation was and is not ours; Stars, rain, wind, snow, ice- None of these are our attainable. Even in our imagined freedom We cannot lower or raise them on cue.
Our fate rests not with the inescapable mysteries, For they cannot instill such impending, reckless tragedy. They bring not our minds `round to staging murderous war. Of our antagonist stained creature they cannot torture, Beyond this, we’ve only ourselves.
Incapable of stunting our malevolent beast Or tongueless, limbless horror sleeping in our cave, Stars shine, rains fall, snows waft, winds blow, ice holds.
Does man not see he shall not shape it, the world’s plot? That the end of its play’s been written in the air? That nature moves outside our paper and pen?
If tomorrow the stage were emptied of killing and war And McDonalds and Wal-Mart and poets And boys and girls and men and women And daughters, sons, mothers and fathers And fowl and fish and animal and terror, The world would be quite powerless To impede such a roaring ovation.
We’ve set it down to man’s actions, to humanity’s grace, And only as the curtain drops shall our horror enter the light.
So its audience might hear.
Let me speak plainly with a bard’s tongue;
"We are bursting; heavyhearted of war."
The place of our end marches not with our beginning;
Crashing planets were not man’s doing,
Creation was and is not ours;
Stars, rain, wind, snow, ice-
None of these are our attainable.
Even in our imagined freedom
We cannot lower or raise them on cue.
Our fate rests not with the inescapable mysteries,
For they cannot instill such impending, reckless tragedy.
They bring not our minds `round to staging murderous war.
Of our antagonist stained creature they cannot torture,
Beyond this, we’ve only ourselves.
Incapable of stunting our malevolent beast
Or tongueless, limbless horror sleeping in our cave,
Stars shine, rains fall, snows waft, winds blow, ice holds.
Does man not see he shall not shape it, the world’s plot?
That the end of its play’s been written in the air?
That nature moves outside our paper and pen?
If tomorrow the stage were emptied of killing and war
And McDonalds and Wal-Mart and poets
And boys and girls and men and women
And daughters, sons, mothers and fathers
And fowl and fish and animal and terror,
The world would be quite powerless
To impede such a roaring ovation.
We’ve set it down to man’s actions, to humanity’s grace,
And only as the curtain drops shall our horror enter the light.