1) Typical mistake: on the 16^th of january 2006

When you speak, you say ‘on the sixteenth of January’ but when you write, ‘on 16th January’ is enough. You can write 16th January or January 16th, as you want. Be careful not to write ‘th’ automatically. It is 22nd, NOT 22th.

2) Use of upper-level letters after figures: 16^th

This was dropped in English at the end of the nineteenth century. It continued in handwriting until the 1930s but is no longer used. There is a reason for this. The first industrially produced typewriter was made in the USA, patented by James Densmore and Christopher Latham Sholes. It was produced by the then sewing machine firm of Remington in 1873. It had a limited number of keys, so typewriting was simplified. You MUST write 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc and not 16^th.

3) Word order - where to put the date in a sentence

The standard word order in English is subject-verb-object/complement. It is usually clearer if you do not separate the verb and the object. There are different conventions in English and American usage for where to put the date in a sentence.

You can take the date of the source as your reference point and use ‘yesterday’ or ‘today’ or ‘Monday’ as appropriate.

The standard French word order is like this:

Plusieurs milliers de Macédoniens ont accueilli avec enthousiasme, vendredi 11 juillet, à l’aéroport de Skopje, l’ancien ministre macédonien de l’intérieur.
Le Monde, 15 juillet 2008

Possible translation:

On Friday 11th July (or: Last Friday), several thousand Macedonians enthusiastically welcomed the former Macedonian Minister of the Interior at Skopje Airport.

In English, there are various possibilities for the date in word order, with differences between British English and American English. Here are some examples:

The Ministry of Defence tonight confirmed another laptop with “sensitive information” on it has been stolen while one of their officials checked out of a hotel. An MoD spokesman said the theft from the Britannia Adelphi hotel in Liverpool city centre on Thursday brought the total of laptops stolen to 659. On Friday the MoD admitted that 658 of its laptops had been stolen over the past four years - nearly double the figure previously claimed.
The Guardian, 20th July 2008

KABUL, July 20 -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met here Sunday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, capping the end of a two-day tour of Afghanistan.
  Washington Post Foreign Service, July 20, 2008

You see that British and American newspapers tend not to give the full date as Le Monde does. It is easier to translate by putting the full date at the beginning of the sentence. Otherwise there is too much separation between the verb and the complement which follows.

4) Exceptions

Although it is usually simpler to put the date at the beginning of a sentence, there are exceptions. You must pay attention to what the sentence is saying.

Examples:

Le financement des activités des troupes françaises, envoyées depuis 2008 en Afghanistan, a coûté, en 2011, 522 millions d’euros.
Le Monde, 27 janvier 2012

Here we have two different dates referring to two different facts.

Confused translation:

In 2011, the financing of French troops’ activities sent since 2008 to Afghanistan cost 522 million euros.

It is clearer to divide this sentence into two parts:

French troops have been sent to Afghanistan since 2008. Financing their activities cost 522 million euros in 2011.

Les renseignements fournis par les services secrets saoudiens avaient déjà permis d’intercepter en octobre 2010 au Royaume-Uni et à Dubaï des bombes dissimulées dans des imprimantes.
Le Monde, 9 mai 2012

Information provided by the Saudi secret services had already made it possible to intercept bombs hidden in printers in the United Kingdom and Dubai in October 2010.

In this example, if you put ‘in October 2010’ at the beginning of the sentence, then it refers to the information and not the time when the bombs were found.

5) This, next, last

These words replace ‘on’ in the date. For example, le 1^erjuillet prochain becomes ‘next 1st July’, NOT ‘on the next 1st July’. En ce mercredi 22 juin is ‘this Wednesday 22nd June’. La semaine dernière is just ‘last week’.

6) Some idiomatic expressions

dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche is idiomatically translated as ‘ (late) on Saturday night’. You do not need to say ‘during the night of Saturday to Sunday’.

Dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi encore, l’aviation israélienne a mené trois raids contre des objectifs du Hamas, faisant au total une vingtaine de blessés.
Le Monde, 23 juin 2012

Again, late on Friday night, Israeli planes made three raids on Hamas targets, leaving a total of twenty wounded.

le mois de… can be omitted. In English it is more idiomatic to say ‘in April’ rather than ‘in the month of April’.

La quantité d’équipements militaires livrée aux insurgés a considérablement augmenté depuis le mois de mars.
Adapté de Le Figaro, 21 juin 2012

‘since March’ is perfectly adequate to translate depuis le mois de mars.

d’ici décembre - by December

d’ici la fin 2014 - by the end of 2014

Selon les climatologues, issus de diverses instituts et centres de recherche européens, si des actions « modérées » sont mises en place pour réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre, le seuil des 2° devrait être atteint d’ici 2050.
Le Monde, 7 mars 2014

According to climatologists from various European institutes and research centres, if ‘moderate’ strategies are organised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the threshold of 2° should be reached by 2050.

ces dernières semaines, ces derniers mois, ces dernières années

These expressions cannot be translated as ‘these last weeks’ etc. You can translate them by ‘over the last few weeks’, ‘during the last few weeks’ or ‘in recent weeks’ etc.

The number of women convicted of drink-driving has almost doubled in recent years, a survey has shown. As many as 17 % of female motorists thought they had driven while over the legal limit in the past year.
Adapted from The Guardian, 9th September 2014.