September 16 Birthday
On September 16, 1940, President Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act, the first peacetime draft in American history. The act required all men between twenty-one and thirty-six to register. 16 million men registered on October 16. The draft was controversial — isolationists opposed it as a step toward war. The first lottery was held on October 29, 1940, drawing numbers from a fishbowl. A year later, the draft would be extended to men eighteen to forty-five, and the US would enter World War II. B.B. King, born this day in 1925, named his guitar Lucille after a fight broke out at one of his shows over a woman named Lucille. He set the burning building's guitar on fire to go back and retrieve it. He played Lucille for sixty years. He performed an estimated 15,000 shows — over 200 per year for decades. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. People born on September 16 fall under the zodiac sign of Virgo. The birthstone is Sapphire and the birth flower is Aster. Historical events on September 16 include 1940: First peacetime military draft in US history signed by FDR, 1620: Mayflower departs Plymouth, England (some sources), 2007: Blackwater contractors kill 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square. Famous people born on September 16 include Lauren Bacall (1924), B.B. King (1925), H.A. Rey (1898).