Associated Press

On Sept. 16, 1893, the largest land run in U.S. history occurred as more than 100,000 white settlers rushed to claim overmore than 6 million acres of land in what is now northern Oklahoma.

In 1940, Samuel T. Rayburn of Texas was first elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; he would hold the post for a record 17 years.

In 1966, the Metropolitan Opera officially opened its new opera house at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”

In 1974, President Gerald R. Ford signed a proclamation announcing a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam war deserters and draft evaders.

In 1982, the massacre of more than 1,300 Palestinian men, women and children at the hands of Israeli-allied Christian Phalange militiamen began in west Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.