September 16 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on September 16

• B.B. King (1925)

  American blues musician and guitarist known for the song The Thrill Is Gone and decades of touring as one of blues music's most influential figures.

• David Copperfield (1956)

  American magician known for elaborate illusions performed on television, including making the Statue of Liberty appear to vanish.

• Nick Jonas (1992)

  American singer and actor, a member of the Jonas Brothers and a solo recording artist.

• Alexis Bledel (1981)

  American actress known for Gilmore Girls and an Emmy-winning role in The Handmaid's Tale.

This Day in History

• 1810 — Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo issued the Grito de Dolores, a call to arms that began Mexico's war for independence from Spain.

• 1955 — A military uprising known as the Revolución Libertadora began in Argentina, leading to the overthrow of President Juan Perón days later.

• 1975 — Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia.

What September 16 Says About You

September 16 has produced three separate declarations of political independence or upheaval, spread across more than a century and a half, which sits oddly well with a numerology day number that reduces to 7 — the digit most associated with searching for a deeper truth rather than accepting an existing arrangement. In 1810, the Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo delivered the Grito de Dolores, a late-night call to arms from the pulpit of his own parish that is now commemorated every year as the start of Mexico's war for independence from Spain, even though Hidalgo himself would be captured and executed within a year. A century and a half later, in 1955, a military uprising in Argentina known as the Revolución Libertadora began on this date, leading within days to the overthrow of President Juan Perón, a rupture whose political aftershocks shaped Argentine politics for decades. And in 1975, Papua New Guinea gained formal independence from Australia, joining the wave of decolonization that reshaped the map of the postwar world. Four performers born on September 16 have each built careers around a specific, hard-won kind of craft. B.B. King, born in 1925, spent more than six decades refining a guitar style so distinctive that musicians still describe playing 'like B.B.' as its own category. David Copperfield, born in 1956, turned stage illusion into mainstream television spectacle, most famously making the Statue of Liberty appear to disappear on live broadcast. Nick Jonas, born in 1992, moved from a teen pop group into a steady solo career spanning music and acting. And Alexis Bledel, born in 1981, became a defining face of early-2000s television before winning an Emmy for a considerably darker role in The Handmaid's Tale. As a Virgo date, September 16 carries the sign's methodical persistence, a useful trait for a birthday whose real history is full of movements that took years, not days, to reach their eventual outcome. Miguel Hidalgo's call to arms was delivered from the small town of Dolores in the early hours of the morning, and although his own rebellion was crushed within a year and he was executed by firing squad, the date is now marked every September 15 into the 16th with Mexico's largest annual public celebration, when the president re-enacts the cry from the National Palace balcony in Mexico City, ringing the same bell Hidalgo is said to have rung to summon his original congregation, a bell now permanently mounted above the National Palace's central balcony rather than left in Dolores itself. Because sapphire and the paired flowers, aster and morning glory, are shared across all of September rather than assigned day by day, none of that symbolism is the 16th's exclusively — though the stone's old symbolic tie to loyalty resonates with a date built around people and nations choosing a new direction and staying committed to it.