On this day: 16 September

Pope Honorius I was posthumously excommunicated at the Third Council of Constantinople, with his support for monothelitism deemed to be heretical.

Ferdinand of Trastámara takes Antequera from the emirate of Granada.

American Revolutionary War: The Franco-American Siege of Savannah begins.

With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for independence from Spain.

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.

Felix Mendelssohn completed the score of his Violin Concerto, his final concerto.

Robert College, in Istanbul, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.

The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York.

Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma.

The General Motors Corporation is founded.

World War I: The Siege of Przemyśl (present-day Poland) begins.

Second World War: Italian forces captured the town of Sidi Barrani, but their invasion of Egypt progressed no further.

World War II: The German Tenth Army reports that it can no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno.

World War II: The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong comes to an end.

The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.

A Soviet Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.

TCN-9 Sydney is the first Australian television station to commence regular broadcasts.

The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.

Typhoon Nancy (pictured), which possibly had the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, made landfall in Muroto, Japan.

The U.S. National Hurricane Research Project sought to weaken Hurricane Esther by seeding it with silver iodide, leading to the establishment of Project Stormfury.

Pakistan establishes its Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission with Abdus Salam as its head.

The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra.

King Hussein of Jordan declares war against the Palestine Liberation Organization, the conflict came to be known as Black September.

The prototype of the Soviet Mikoyan MiG-31, one of the fastest combat jets in the world, made its maiden flight.

Papua New Guinea gains independence from Australia.

Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe join the United Nations.

Armenian champion swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into a Yerevan reservoir.

Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.

The Sugarhill Gang released their first single, Rapper's Delight.

The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.

During 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.

The railroad between the People's Republic of China and Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.

Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-79 to dock with the Russian space station Mir.

Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launches its Kobani offensive against Syrian–Kurdish forces.

Inspiration4, the first private orbital crewed spaceflight, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center.