After an aborted attempt with a leaking companion ship, the Mayflower finally departed Plymouth, England alone, carrying 102 passengers — separatist Puritans and other settlers seeking opportunity in the New World. The 66-day crossing was brutal, plagued by storms and cramped conditions, but ended with the founding of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, one of the foundational events of English colonial America.

Before dawn, Father Miguel Hidalgo gathered his parishioners in the small town of Dolores and delivered a fiery speech denouncing Spanish colonial rule, urging his listeners to fight for land and liberty. The improvised uprising, later called the Grito de Dolores, spread rapidly across the countryside and marked the opening act of an eleven-year war that ended with Mexican independence in 1821. September 16 is now celebrated as Mexico's Independence Day.

Arriving back in Labrador after months in the Arctic, explorer Robert Peary sent a telegram claiming he had reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. The announcement triggered a public feud with rival explorer Frederick Cook, who claimed to have reached the pole a year earlier. Neither claim has ever been fully verified, and the controversy over who, if anyone, first stood at the North Pole persists among historians and polar scientists today.

In mid-September 1973, Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, gravely ill with cancer, watched the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet consolidate power following the coup that killed his friend President Salvador Allende. Soldiers ransacked Neruda's homes searching for weapons and dissidents. He would die less than two weeks later, on September 23, his funeral becoming one of the first open acts of public defiance against the new regime.