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20211776 Club

No astronauts aboard: four private citizens launch to orbit atop a Falcon 9

Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux and Christopher Sembroski rode Crew Dragon Resilience toward an altitude no one has reached since 1999.

No orbital spaceflight had ever flown without at least one professional astronaut aboard. That changed just after midnight on September 16, 2021, when a Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A carrying Crew Dragon Resilience and four private citizens: Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux and Christopher Sembroski. None had flown to space before. Their three-day mission, named Inspiration4, aimed to raise $100 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital…

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More from September 16
1776

Washington's men chase the British off Harlem Heights, and hold

A morning ambush of Knowlton's Rangers turns into a two-hour firefight in a buckwheat field, and this time the Americans don't run.
1620

The Mayflower clears Plymouth harbor, alone, bound for Virginia

The Speedwell has already been left behind as unseaworthy; 102 passengers now cross alone.
1989

Yeltsin stops at a Texas supermarket and asks what it costs to feed a family

Twenty minutes at Randalls #30 in Webster leaves the Soviet leader stunned into silence on the flight to Miami.
19871776 Club
The Montreal agreement turns two years of scientific alarm into binding limits on CFCs.
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Read the full September 16 edition →Everything that happened on September 16 →
More from Modern America
2001

Hijacked jets strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; a fourth crashes in a Pennsylvania field

Passengers aboard United 93 fought back before it went down near Shanksville.
2008

Lehman Brothers collapses into bankruptcy; $600 billion in assets, no buyer, no rescue

A weekend of failed talks with Barclays and Bank of America ends with the largest corporate bankruptcy filing ever recorded.
2001

Bush tells Congress: this is a war on terror, and it starts with al Qaeda

Nine days after the towers fell, the president draws a line meant to reach far past Afghanistan.
2001

Every network goes dark to the same broadcast tonight; $200 million follows

ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox suspend their rivalry for two commercial-free hours of grief and music.
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