Category: Today

December 17

546 – The Siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths under King Totila ends by bribing the Byzantine garrison and sacking the city.

1538 – After separating from the Church of Rome and appointing himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, King Henry VIII of England is excommunicated by Pope Paul III.

1777 – France formally recognizes the United States as an independent nation.

1790 – The Aztec Sun Stone calendar is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City during repairs to the city cathedral.

1819 – Simón Bolívar, who later dies on this date in 1830, declares the independence of Gran Colombia during the Congress of Angostura.

1835 – The second Great Fire of New York destroys 13 acres of New York City’s Financial District.

1862 – General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky due to his belief they were engaged in unlicensed trade.

1892 – First issue of Vogue magazine is published.

1903 – Orville Wright, piloting the Wright Flyer, makes the first controlled powered flight of a heavier than air craft flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1933 – The first NFL Championship Game is played at Wrigley Field between the New York Giants and Chicago Bears.

1935 – The Douglas DC-3 make its first flight

1938 – While working as the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin, Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of uranium releasing large amounts of energy.

1944 –  During the Battle of the Bulge, in areas around Malmedy, Belgium, a total of 373 known U.S. soldiers, held as Prisoners of War, are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe troops under the command of Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper.

1947 – The Boeing B-47 Stratojet makes its first flight

1950 – The 94th Fighter Interceptor Squadron of the U.S. Air Force 1st Fighter Wing flies its first combat sortie in Korea in F-86 Sabres.

1957 – The U.S. successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1960 – Troops loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia crush the coup that began December 13, returning power to their leader upon his return from Brazil.

1969 – The U.S. Air Force officially closes its Project Blue Book study of UFOs.

1973 – Thirty travelers are killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport.

1981 – American Brigadier General James L. Dozier is abducted by the Red Brigades in Verona, Italy.

1989 – Fernando Collor de Mello defeats Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, becoming the first democratically elected President in almost 30 years.

2003 –Mojave Aerospace Ventures’ SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first powered flight reaching supersonic speed.

2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations

December 16

1497 – During his voyage to discover a ocean route to India, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama passes the Great Fish River at the southern tip of Africa, where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1620 – While exploring around Cape Cod, Myles Standish and a group of 18 settlers of the Plymouth colony, are confronted by 30 Nauset Indians – which became known as the “First Encounter: – resulting in a brief exchange of hostilities with no casualties on either side.

1689 – The co-reigning English King and Queen William and Mary give the royal ascent to the English Bill of Rights.

1773 – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

1777 – Virginia becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1811 – The first 2 in a series of 4 severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri.

1863 – Joseph E. Johnston replaces Braxton Bragg as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.

1880 – The Boers of South Africa declare their independence and war breaks out between their South African Republic and the British Empire.

1907 – The U.S. Navy’s Great White Fleet begins its cruise of circumnavigation.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, the Royal Hellenic Navy defeats the Ottoman Navy near the mouth of the Dardanelles causing the Turks to  retreat within the Straits and leaving the Aegean Sea open to the Greeks.

1930 – Bank robber Herman Lamm commits suicide and all but 2 members of his gang are killed when surrounded by a 200 member strong posse, in Sidell, Illinois, following a car chase after a botched robbery of the Citizens State Bank in Clinton, Indiana.

1944 – The German Army initiates the Ardennes Offensive – The Battle of the Bulge – beginning with the surprise attack of 3 German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1947 – At Bell Telephone Laboratories, William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.

1960 – United Airlines Flight 826, a Douglas DC-8 and TWA Flight 266, a Lockheed Super Constellation, collide over Staten Island, New York and crash, killing all 128 passengers and crews aboard both aircraft and 6 more on the ground.

1978 – Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.

1989 – U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Smith Vance is assassinated by a mail bomb sent by Walter Leroy Moody, Jr.

1991 – The Major League Baseball expansion club Florida Marlins sign their 1st player, 16 year old pitcher Clemente Nunez

2016 – The State Department increases the reward for information on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to $25 million

2020 – A major winter storm hits the U.S. Northeast, resulting in at least 7 deaths and Binghamton, New York, receiving a record 41 inches of snowfall.

December 15

530 – Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian appoints a commission to compile a code of Roman jurisprudence.

1256 – The Nizari Ismaili (Assassin) stronghold at Alamut Castle near Masoudabad Persia surrenders to the Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan

1270 – The Assassin stronghold at Gerdkuh, Persia surrenders to the Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan

1275 – The Mongol stronghold at Alamut Castle is retaken by Nizari Ismaili forces under Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad.

1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

1836 – A fire that  nearly burns the U.S. Patent Office building in Washington, D.C. to the ground, destroys all 9,957 patents issued by the federal government to that date.

1864 – The Battle of Nashville during the war between the states begins and ends the following day with the defeat in detail of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, by the Union Army of the Cumberland.

1890 – After leaving Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Chief Sitting Bull returns to the Standing Rock Reservation and is killed during a gunfight between agency police and the Chief’s followers resisting his arrest because of fears he might support the Ghost Dance movement.

1903 – Italian American food cart vendor Italo Marchiony receives a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that makes ice cream cones.

1933 – The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the 18th Amendment

1939 – Gone with the Wind premieres at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia

1941 – German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine.

1942 –During World War II, on Guadalcanal, the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse between U.S. forces under the command of Alexander Patch and Japanese forces under the command of Harukichi Hyakutake begins in the named hills near the Mantanikau river.

1944 – During World War II, a single engine UC-64A Norseman aircraft carrying U.S. Army Air Forces Major Glenn Miller is lost in a flight over the English Channel and never recovered.

1961 – Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization. He is hanged on June 1 the following year.

1965 – The Gemini 6A mission, with crew members Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, launches to rendezvous with Gemini 7.

1978 – President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People’s Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan.

2005 – The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor enters service in the U.S. Air Force.

2006 – The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II makes its first flight.

2009 – Oral Roberts dies of complications from pneumonia at the age of 91 at Newport Beach, California

2013 – China successfully lands a rover explorer on the moon

2015 -The Mayor of Flint, Michigan declares a state of emergency over contaminated water supplies.

 

December 14

557 – A severe earthquake in Constantinople damages the dome of Hagia Sophia.

1542 – Princess Mary Stuart becomes Queen of Scots at the age of one week on the death of her father, James V of Scotland.

1782 – The Montgolfier brothers test fly an unmanned hot air balloon in France; it floats over a mile and a half.

1799 – Former President and General of The Armies, George Washington dies, age 67, at his home, Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

1814 – During the War of 1812, the Royal Navy seizes control of Lake Borgne, Louisiana.

1819 – Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state.

1836 – The boundary dispute between Ohio and Michigan of the control of the mouth of the Maumee River into Lake Erie is resolved with both parties accepting Congress’ terms for admitting Michigan as a state.

1900 – Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his Black-body Radiation law within Quantum Mechanics to the German Physical Society in Berlin.

1902 – The Commercial Pacific Cable Company lays the first Pacific telegraph cable, from San Francisco to Honolulu.

1903 – The Wright brothers make a first unsuccessful attempt to fly the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1907 – The Thomas W. Lawson, the largest sailing ship ever built, which was named after the American owner, runs aground and founders near the Hellweather’s Reef within the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall England, with the loss of the pilot and 15 seamen.

1911 – Roald Amundsen and his team of Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first men to reach the South Pole.

1940 –The Pu-238 isotope of Plutonium is first synthesized by physicist Glenn Seaborg at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory,  University of California, Berkeley.

1962 – NASA’s Mariner 2 probe becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

1964 – In the case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States expands the definition of ‘Commerce between the States” ruling that Congress can use the Constitution’s clause to fight discrimination.

1972 –At 00:40 hrs EST, Apollo 17 Mission Commander Eugene Cernan enters the Lunar Module Challenger after the last of 3 lunar surface activities, becoming the last man to walk on the Moon.
At 17:55 hrs, EST, Challenger launches from the Moon to rendezvous with the orbiting Command/Service Module America.

1985 – Wilma Mankiller takes office as the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

2012 – After murdering his mother at their home, a lone gunman murders 26 students and faculty at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut before committing suicide a minute after Police arrive at the school.

2017 – The Walt Disney Company announces that acquires 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio, for $52.4 billion.

2020 -The Electoral College votes 306-232 to elect Joe Biden as President.

December 13

1545 – The Council of Trent – the ‘Counter-Lutheran Reformation’ – begins

1577 –With 5 other ships, Francis Drake, aboard the Pelican, sets sail from Plymouth, England, on his round the world voyage.

1636 –By order of the Massachusetts Bay Colony General Court, the first militia regiments in North America are organized for colonial defense.

1769 – Dartmouth College is founded by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, with a royal charter from King George III, on land donated by the New Hampshire Royal governor John Wentworth.

1862 – During the Civil War, Confederate General Robert E. Lee defeats Union General Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg, Virginia

1937 – During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city of Nanking, defended by the National Revolutionary Army under the command of General Tang Shengzhi, falls to the Japanese. With Japanese troops beginning “The Rape of Nanking, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians.

1938 – The German NAZI government opens the Neuengamme concentration camp in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg.

1949 – The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

1960 – While Ras Täfäri Mäkonnän, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaims him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor, but the coup is denounced by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and regular army and police forces end it.

1961 – Folk artist Anna Mary ‘Grandma’ Moses dies, age 101, at Hoosick Falls New York.

1962 – NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

1972 – Apollo astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the 3rd, final and to date, last human extra-vehicular activity on the moon.

1974 – North Vietnam launches an offensive against South Vietnam that will result in the collapse of the government.

1977 – Air Indiana Flight 216, a Douglas DC-3, crashes near Evansville Regional Airport, killing all 29 passengers and crew aboard, including the University of Evansville Indiana basketball team and support staff.

1983 – Martha Layne Collins is inaugurated as Kentucky’s 1st female governor

1994 – Flagship Airlines Flight 3379, a Jetstream 32 turboprop commuter plane, crashes while attempting to land at Raleigh–Durham International Airport, killing 13 of the 18 passengers and both pilots aboard.

2003 – Fugitive Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured in the town of ad-Dawr, Iraq by U.S. Army forces assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

December 12

1098 – After their success of taking and defending Antioch, forces of the First Crusade besiege the city of Ma’arra in modern Syria.

1787 – Pennsylvania becomes the 2nd state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1862 – The City-Class ironclad USS Cairo strikes a Confederate naval mine and sinks on the Yazoo River.

1917 – Father Edward J. Flanagan founds Boys Town, Nebraska as a farm village for wayward boys

1937 – Japanese aircraft bomb and sink the U.S. gunboat USS Panay on the Yangtze river in China

1941 – Jesús Villamor and 4 other Filipino pilots, flying Boeing P-26 ‘Peashooters‘ of the 6th Tactical Fighter Squadron of the United States Army Forces in the Far East Air Force, fend off 54 Japanese A6M Zero fighters raiding Batangas Field, Philippines.

1979 – An earthquake of 8.2 magnitude occurs just offshore from the border between Ecuador and Colombia, near the port city of Tumaco, with Columbia’s Nariño Department on its southern Pacific coast border, hardest hit.

1985 – Arrow Air Flight 1285, a McDonnell Douglas DC-8, crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killing all 256 people on board, including 236 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division returning from a peace keeping deployment in the Sanai.

2000 – In the case of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court ends the legal question of which candidate won the election in Florida, finding for George Bush

2015 – The Paris Agreement relating to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is adopted.

December 11

1602 – A surprise attack by forces under the command of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of the House of Savoy, is repelled by the citizens of Geneva.

1719  – 1st recorded display of Aurora Borealis in the New England American colonies

1815 – The Senate creates a select committee on finance and a uniform national currency, witch is the predecessor of the United States Senate Committee on Finance.

1816 – Indiana becomes the 19th U.S. state.

1868 – During the Paraguayan War of the Triple Alliance, Brazilian forces troops defeat Paraguayan near the Avay river in Paraguay.

1901 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, England to Saint John’s, Newfoundland.

1913 – More than 2 years after it was stolen from the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, Italy.

1934 – Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the final time.

1941 – As allies under the Tripartite Pact, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. The U.S. returns the favor and declares war on them.
Attacking Wake Island, the Imperial Japanese Navy suffers its first losses when U.S. Marine Battery L fires on, and sinks the destroyer Hayate and Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211  sink the destroyer Kisaragi .

1948 – The United Nations passes General Assembly Resolution 194, creating a Conciliation Commission to mediate and end to the Arab-Israeli War.

1951 – Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement from baseball

1961  – President Kennedy provides US military helicopters & crews to aid South Vietnam.

1972 – The Apollo 17 Lunar Module Challenger, piloted by Mission Commander Eugene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, lands on the Moon in the Taurus–Littrow valley.

1990 – Heavy fog along a stretch of Interstate 75 in Southeastern Tennessee near Calhoun, causes multiple vehicle collisions resulting in a total of 12 people killed and 42 being injured.

2008 – Bernard Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

2017 – A pipe bomb partially detonates in the New York City Subway, in the Times Square–42nd Street/Port Authority Bus Terminal. 4 people are injured, including the perpetrator, a moslem immigrant from Bangladesh,  who is later tried and sentenced to life imprisonment, plus 30 years.

2020 – The Food and Drug Administration issues an Emergency Use Authorization on the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by the agency.

2022 – U.S. authorities announce that the Libyan man accused of making the bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103, Abu Agila Mas’ud, is now in U.S. custody

 

December 10

1520 – Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine (a denunciation of many of Luther’s 95 theses and an order to recant them) outside Wittenberg’s Elster Gate.

1684 – Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, derived from Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, titled –De Motu Corporum In Gyrum – On the motion of bodies in an orbit –  is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley. Yes that Halley; the astronomer with a comet named after him.

1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.

1817 – Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state.

1864 – During Sherman’s March to the Sea, Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

1884 – Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.

1898 – The Treaty of Paris of 1898 is signed, officially ending the Spanish–American War, with Spain relinquishing all claim of sovereignty over, and title to: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

1901 – The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, with Wilhelm Röntgen being awarded the prize in Physics for his discovery of X-rays

1906 – President Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

1941 – Imperial Japanese forces, under the command of General Masaharu Homma, land on Luzon island in the Philippines.
The Royal Navy’s Battleship HMS Prince of Wales and Cruiser HMS Repulse are sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers off British Malaya while attempting to stop Japanese landings there.

1949 – President of the Republic of China,  Chiang Kai-shek and his government is forced to retreat to Taiwan when the communist People’s Liberation Army besieges Chengdu, the last Kuomintang held city in mainland China.

1962 – David Lean’s film “Lawrence of Arabia” premieres at Odeon Leicester Square.

1978 – Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for agreeing to the Camp David Accords which leads to a peace treaty between the nations.

2021 – A widespread tornado outbreak hits the Central, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the U.S., killing 89 people with most of the fatalities occurring in Kentucky, where a single tornado kills 57 people, and injures hundreds of others.

December 9

536 – The Byzantine Roman Empire’s general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed as the Goths garrison that had occupied the city flees, restoring the city to Roman rule.

1775 – Underestimating Colonial Militia strength in southeast Virginia by more than half, the British troops and Loyalists under the command of Lord Dunsmore are defeated in battle near Great Bridge, suffering such heavy losses it ends British rule in Virginia.

1835 – The Texian Revolutionary Army captures San Antonio de Bexar, following a siege lasting nearly 2 months and begin to refortify the Alamo Mission.

1861 –  The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War,  to investigate the progress of the war against the Confederacy, is established by Congress.

1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first Black governor of a U.S. State following the impeachment of Henry C. Warmoth.

1911 – An explosion at the Cross Mountain Mine near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.

1917 – During World War I,  the Army of Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire.

1941 – China, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Philippine Commonwealth declare war on Germany and Japan.
The American 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.

1946 – The second convening of a military tribunal at Nuremberg begins with prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

1950 – Swiss born American laboratory chemist Harry Henrich Golodnitsky Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1968 – Inventor Douglas Engelbart gives what became known as “The Mother of All Demos”, publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System, a predecessor to the ARPANET, which developed into the internet.

1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction. 10 years later, however, the U.S. Army decided to inoculate all troops due to a single case of a soldier coming down with the disease from an unknown source.

1987 – The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank by Palestinian terrorists.

1992 – President Bush deploys U.S. troops, in Operation Restore Hope, to Somalia to help create a secure environment for humanitarian efforts there.

2006 – Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-116 carrying parts of the International Space Station.

2008 – Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

 

December 8

1660 – A woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello.

1912 – With the several defeats of Ottoman Empire forces in the Balkan War, leaders of the German Empire hold an Imperial War Council to discuss the possibility that war might break out across Europe.

1941 – President Roosevelt delivers a request for Congress to declare a state of war exists between the U.S. and Japan after their Naval attack on Hawaii.
Japanese forces simultaneously invade Shanghai International Settlement, Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies after their attack on Hawaii the previous day.

1953 – President Eisenhower delivers his “Atoms for Peace” speech, which leads to an American program to supply equipment and information on nuclear power to schools, hospitals, and research institutions.

1963 – Pan Am Flight 214, a Boeing 707, is struck by lightning and crashes near Elkton, Maryland, killing all 81 passengers and crew on board.

1972 – United Airlines Flight 553, a Boeing 737, crashes after aborting its landing attempt at Chicago Midway International Airport, killing 43 passengers and crew of the 61 aboard the aircraft and 2 more on the ground.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered in front of The Dakota apartments in New York City

1987 – The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House.

1988 – A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II crashes into an apartment complex in Remscheid, Germany, killing the pilot, 5 people on the ground and injuring 50 others.

1991 – The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.

2004 – Nathan Gale opens fire at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, killing former Pantera guitarist ‘Dimebag’ Darrell Abbott and 3 others before being shot dead by a police officer.

2010 – With the second launch of Falcon 9 and the first launch of Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

2019 – The first openly confirmed case of COVID-19 is diagnosed in China.

December 7

1776 –At age 19, Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, enters service in the American Continental Army at the rank of Major General, the next to highest officer rank at the time.

1787 – Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1842 – The New York Philharmonic Orchestra performs its first concert, opening on lower Broadway, with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 conducted by Ureli Corelli Hill.

1917 – Duri9ng World War I, the U.S. declares war on Austria-Hungary.

1932 – German born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.

1941 – The Imperial Japanese Navy, launching 414 attack and fighter aircraft from the fleet carriers, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Akagi and Kaga, carry out what appears to be a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet, Army and Marine air and ground forces at Pearl Harbor, and elsewhere on Oahu island, Hawaii.

1946 – A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people, the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history.

1965 – Roman Catholic Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously revoke mutual excommunications that had been in place since ‘The Great Schism’ of 1054 A.D.

1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, with astronauts
Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans and Harrison H. Schmitt aboard the Command Module America launches from Complex LC-39 at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral to explore the Taurus–Littrow valley of the  Mare Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity. While about 18,000 miles on the way out, a series of full circumference pictures of Earth are taken, one released as “The Blue Marble”.

1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1987 – Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, a British Aerospace 146-200A, crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 passengers and crew on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and steers the plane into the ground.

1993 – Passenger Colin Ferguson murders 6 people and injures 19 others on the Lon Island rail Road, in Nassau County, New York, before being tackled by other passengers.

1995 – Launched 6 years earlier from Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-34, the Galileo space probe arrives at Jupiter.

2005 – Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by  U.S. Air Marshals at Miami International Airport.

2020 – Retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Chuck Yeager dies, age 97, in a Los Angeles hospital.

December 6

1240 – The city of Kyiv falls to invading Mongols under Batu Khan.

1492 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Hispaniola during his first voyage of exploration.

1534 – The city of Quito, Ecuador is founded by Spanish settlers led by Sebastián de Belalcázar.

1790 – The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia.

1865 – Georgia ratifies the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1884 – The Washington Monument in Washington is completed.

1904 – In his State of the Union message, President Roosevelt gives his “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the U.S. would intervene in the Western Hemisphere should Latin American governments prove incapable or unstable, forming the basis for the ‘Banana Wars’ in Central America.

1907 – Explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company No. 6 and No. 8 mines in Monongah, West Virginia, kill 362 workers.

1912 – The limestone bust of Nefertiti, the royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten is discovered by archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in the Amarna excavations of the workshop of court sculptor Thutmose.

1917 – During World War I, the USS Jacob Jones is the first American destroyer to be sunk by enemy action, when it is torpedoed by German submarine SM U-53.

1923– President Coolidge’s address to Congress when it reconvened is the first presidential speech broadcast on radio.

1928 – The government of Colombia sends military forces to suppress a month long strike by workers of the United Fruit Company, resulting in an unknown number of deaths.

1933 – In the case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Southern District of New York federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is not obscene.

1941 – During World War II, Special Training School No. 103, nicknamed “Camp X”, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, opens to train Allied personnel of the Special Operations Executive, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and American Office of Strategic Services, how to perform clandestine operations behind enemy lines

1957 – A launchpad explosion of rocket Vanguard TV3 at Cape Canaveral,  thwarts the first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit.

1967 – Adrian Kantrowitz performs the first human heart transplant in the U.S. but the patient only lives for 6 hours afterwards.

1973 – By terms of the 25th amendment, the U.S. House votes 387–35 to confirm Michigan Representative Gerald Ford’s nomination as Vice President of the United States and he is sworn into office.

1998 – Hugo Chávez is elected as president of Venezuela

2006 – NASA displays photographs taken by the Mars Global Surveyor  suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars.

2017 – Donald Trump announces the U.S. official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

2022 –The last of 1,574 Boeing 747 jets rolls off the production line in Everett, Washington.

December 5

1408 – The Mongolian Golden Horde, under Edigu Khan, reaches and besieges Moscow.

1578 – On his voyage of circumnavigation, Sir Francis Drake, sails through Strait of Magellan the raids Valparaiso.

1766 – In London, auctioneer James Christie holds his first sale.

1770 – At trial, among others charged with Murder, British 29th Regiment of Foot Privates Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy, who, defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy II, assisted by Sampson Blowers and Paul Revere, are the only soldiers found guilty for the lesser charge of Manslaughter of Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray in the ‘Boston Massacre’. Pleading Benefit of Clergy, the right to a lesser sentence for a first offender, their punishment is to be branded on the thumb.

1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, New York, troops under Henry Knox begins transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1776 – Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society in the U.S., holds its first meeting at the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia

1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies, age 35, at his home in Vienna, Austria.

1831 –Defeated for re-election as President by Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, but elected as a Congressional Representative for Massachusetts in the election of 1830, former President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives, where he serves for 8 terms.

1848 – In a message to Congress, President Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

1933 – The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment authorizing prohibition.

1945 – U.S. Navy Flight 19, a group of 5 Avenger bombers on a training flight, disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.

1955 – 20 years after breaking away, the members of the Congress of Industrial Organizations remerge with the American Federation of Labor and form the AFL–CIO.

1964 – For heroism in battle against a much larger force of Viet Cong earlier in the year, U.S. Army Captain Roger Donlon, commanding officer of a Special Forces camp at Nam Dong, is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the Vietnam War.

2007 – 19 year old Robert A. Hawkins kills 8 people and wounds 4 before killing himself at a Von Maur department store, Westroads Mall, in Omaha, Nebraska

2014 – Exploration Flight Test 1, the first flight test of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

2021 – World War II veteran and retired Senator Robert Dole, dies, age 98 at his home in Washington D.C.

2022 – Actress Kirstie Alley, dies, age 71 at her home in Clearwater Florida.

December 4

530 BC – Cyrus the Great of Persia, noted in the Old Testament for ordering the return of the Jews to Israel, and authorizing the building of the Second Temple, dies in battle near the headwaters of the Jaxartes river in Central Asia.

771 – King Carloman dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne, sole King of the Franks.

1110 – During the 1st Crusade, the Fatimid caliphate ruled city of Sidon is captured by the forces of Baldwin I of Jerusalem, Sigurd I of Norway and Ordelafo Faliero, Doge of Venice.

1619 – Aboard the ship Margaret, 38 English colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred on the north bank of the James River near Herring Creek in Virginia Colony.

1783 – A week after British forces have evacuated New York City at the end of the Revolution, Fraunces Tavern puts on a victory dinner for General Washington, where he bids farewell to his officers of the Continental Army

1786 – Mission Santa Barbara – later expanding to become Santa Barbera California – is dedicated on the feast day of Saint Barbara by Fermín Lasuén of the Franciscan order.

1804 – The House of Representatives adopts articles of impeachment for ‘partisan decisions’ against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase.

1861 – The Electors of the several states of the Confederate States of America unanimously elect Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander H. Stephens as Vice President.

1865 – North Carolina ratifies the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1867 – Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, known today as The Grange.

1872 – The crewless American brigantine Mary Celeste, drifting in the Atlantic, is discovered by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. Her master Benjamin Briggs and all 9 others known to have been on board are never accounted for.

1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published.

1918 – President Wilson becomes the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office, sailing for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, the “Long Patrol” of the Marine Corps 2nd Raider Battalion under Colonel Evans Carlson returns from behind the Japanese lines.

1945 – The Senate approves the treaty of U.S. participation in the United Nations.

1950 – During the Korean War, Ensign Jesse L. Brown – the first Black to complete the U. S. Navy’s basic flight training program – is killed in action during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. In a futile attempt to rescue him, his wingman Lt J.G. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., intentionally crashes his own aircraft nearby, and is later as awarded the Medal of Honor for the effort.

1965 – The Gemini 7 mission with crew members Frank Borman and Jim Lovell launches to later rendezvous with Gemini 6A.
Eastern Air Lines Flight 853, a Lockheed Super Constellation, enroute from Boston Logan International Airport to Newark International Airport, collides in mid-air with Trans World Airlines Flight 42, a Boeing 707, enroute from San Francisco International Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport, over Carmel, New York. While the Boeing plane is able to land safely at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the Lockheed crash lands in a pasture on Hunt Mountain in North Salem, New York killing 3 of the 51 passengers aboard and the plane’s Captain.

1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, City Councilwoman Dianne Feinstein is appointed San Francisco’s first female mayor.

1983 – Responding to an F-14 being fired on by an SA-7 surface to air missile, US Navy aircraft launch from the USS John F. Kennedy and USS Independence to attack Syrian missile sites in Lebanon. An A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair are shot down with 1 pilot killed, 1 rescued and 1 captured and held prisoner until early January.

1991 – Terry A. Anderson is released after seven years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut; he is the last and longest held American hostage in Lebanon.

1992 – To provide increased support for U.N. UNISOM humanitarian relief efforts for civilians during the Somali Civil War, President Bush orders 28,000 additional U.S. troops to Somalia.

1998 – The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched.

2017 – The Thomas Fire starts near Santa Paula, California, burning 440 square miles of land in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the largest wildfire to date in modern California history.

December 3

1586 – Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia

1736 – Swedish Astronomer Anders Celsius takes measurements that confirm Newton’s theory that the earth is an ellipsoid rather than the previously accepted sphere

1775 – Purchased by the Continental Congress on November 4th for the Continental Navy, USS Alfred, after fitting out, becomes the first vessel to fly Continental Colors, the first national flag of the United States, hoisted by Lieutenant John Paul Jones.

1800 – In the presidential election, the Electoral College casts votes for president and vice president that result in a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr 35 times until on the 36th ballot, Jefferson is elected due to several Federalist Party Electors changing their vote

1818 – Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.

1901 – In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of corporate trusts – at the time how large businesses were organized.

1904 – The Jupiter moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine in photographs taken with the Crossley 36 inch reflector of the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, at the University of California, San Jose.

1912 – Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia -the Balkan League – sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire, temporarily halting the First Balkan War. The armistice is not renewed and expires on February 3, 1913, with  hostilities resuming.

1929 – President Herbert Hoover delivers his first State of the Union message to Congress. It is presented in the form of a written message rather than a speech.

1938 – Nazi Germany issues the Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property forcing Jews to sell real property, businesses, and stocks at below market value as part of Aryanization.

1960 – The musical Camelot debuts at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway starring, Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet.

1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first human to human heart transplant from 25 year old Denise Darvall, killed in a traffic accident, to 53 year old Louis Washkansky, who survives until the 21st of the month.

1973 – NASA’s Space probe Pioneer 10 sends back the first close up images of Jupiter.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.

1984 – A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people and injures another 150,000–600,000.

1989 – In a meeting off the coast of Malta, President Bush and Soviet leader  Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact may be coming to an end.

1992 – A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world’s first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.

1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

2005 – Dick Rutan pilots the XCOR Aerospace rocket powered Long-EZ aircraft, making the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail from the Mojave post office to California City, California.

2007 – Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, and close a 20 mile stretch of Interstate 5 highway for several days. At least 8 deaths are blamed on the floods.

2019 – Kamala Harris ends her campaign to be the 2020 Democratic candidate for president even before the first primary election is held.

2022 – A targeted attack on 2 electric substations in North Carolina causes a blackout for 40,000 residents in the area

December 2

1763 – The Touro Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island is dedicated, the first synagogue in what will become the United States.

1766 – Swedish parliament approves the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act and implements it as a ground law, the first nation in the world with legislated freedom of speech.

1823 – In a State of the Union message, President Monroe proclaims American neutrality in future European conflicts, and warns European powers not to interfere in the Americas; the ‘Monroe Doctrine’.

1845 – In a State of the Union message, President Polk proposes that the United States should aggressively expand into the West; the ‘Manifest Destiny’.

1859 – In Charles Town Virginia, abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1865 – Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1899 – During the Philippine–American War, at Tirad Pass on Luzon, a 60 man Filipino force commanded by Brigadier General Gregorio del Pilar fights a rear guard action against 500 Americans, mostly of the 33rd Volunteer Infantry Regiment under Major Peyton C. March, delaying the American advance long enough to ensure that President Emilio Aguinaldo and his troops escape before all but 8 solders are killed. It’s remembered as the “Filipino Thermopylae”.

1917 – During World War I, Russia and the Central Powers sign an armistice at Brest-Litovsk, ending Russian involvement in the war.

1927 – The Ford Motor Company unveils the Model A as its new model of automobile.

1930 –In a State of the Union message, President Hoover proposes a $150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.

1942 – Somewhere in the Pacific ocean, approximately half way between Japan and the Hawaiian islands, the coded radio message, Niitakayama Nobore “Climb Mount Niitaka”, is received on the flagship of Japan’s 1st Air Fleet and given to Admiral Nagumo. The code words are his orders to open a set of top secret documents which confirm that Japan will be going to war with the United States, and to execute the plan to attack Pearl Harbor. It also gives the date to commence the attack, December 8th, which is the 7th on the Hawaiian side of the International Date Line.
At the same time, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first artificial self sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the hand built Chicago Pile-1 reactor under the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field as part of the Manhattan Project.

1947 – Arab residents of Jerusalem break out in riot in response to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.

1954 – The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Taiwan, is signed in Washington, D.C., remaining in effect until 1980.

1962 – After a trip to Vietnam at the request of President Kennedy, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to comment adversely on the war’s progress.

1970 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.

1971 – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm al-Quwain form the United Arab Emirates.

1980 – 4 American missionaries, Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovanare kidnapped, raped and murdered by El Salvadoran National Guard troops near San Salvador.

1982 – At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart, surviving for 112 days afterwards.

1993 – Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is shot and killed in Medellín.

2015 – Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik attack a Christmas party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding 22 before finally being killed in a running street shootout with police

2016 – Fire breaks out at a warehouse converted into an artist’s collective, in Oakland, California, killing 36 people

2020 – Cannabis is removed from the list of most dangerous drugs of the international drug control treaty by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

December 1

1640 – Portugal acclaims João IV as King of Portugal ending the personal union of Portugal and Spain by King Philip III of Spain.

1821 – José Núñez de Cáceres wins the independence of the Dominican Republic from Spain and names the new territory the Republic of Spanish Haiti.

1822 – Peter I is crowned Emperor of Brazil.

1824 – In the U.S. presidential election, since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes, the House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in the race between Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford. (John Quincy Adams is elected)

1862 – In his State of the Union Address, President Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered 10 weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.

1878 – President Rutherford B. Hayes gets the first telephone installed in the White House

1913 – Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.

1924 – The National Hockey League’s first United States based franchise, the Boston Bruins, plays their first game in league play at home

1941 – At an imperial conference, Emperor Hirohito gives the final approval to initiate “War against the United States, United Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.”

1955 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws.

1958 – A fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago kills 92 children and 3 nuns.

1959 – The U.S. and 11 other countries that were active in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58 sign the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent.

1964 – President Johnson and his top ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam.

1969 – During the Vietnam War, the first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.

1974 – TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport, killing all 92 passengers and crew aboard, and Northwest Airlines Flight 6231, another Boeing 727, crashes northwest of John F. Kennedy International Airport killing the 3 crew on the jet chartered to pick up the Baltimore Colts football team in Buffalo, New York

1984 – NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, where a remote controlled Boeing 720 airliner is deliberately crashed at Rogers Dry Lake in California’s Mojave Desert, in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes.

1989 – East Germany’s parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist Party the leading role in state government.

1997 – At the Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, teenager Michael Carneal opens fire on a group of praying students, killing 3 and wounding 5 before surrendering to the school’s principal.

2019 – The first known case of COVID-19 is seen in China.

2020 – The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico collapses

November 30

1707 – The 2nd Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida from the Spanish during Queen Anne’s War.

1782 – In Paris, representatives from the United States and Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles, later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

1803 – In New Orleans, Spain officially transfers the Louisiana Territory to the French First Republic.

1804 – The Senate begins an impeachment trial of Federalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase on the charge of partisan political court decisions

1864 – Near Franklin Tennessee, the Confederate Army of Tennessee, under Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, suffers heavy losses in numerous frontal assaults against fortified positions occupied by the the Union Army of the Ohio under Major General John Schofield while his troops stage an orderly retreat to Nashville.

1941 – The SS-Einsatzgruppen begin to round up some 25,000 Jews from the Riga, Latvia Ghetto and kill them in the Rumbula forest over the following week.

1947 – War breaks out in Mandatory Palestine between Jewish and Arab forces.

1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, a Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.

1962 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 512, a Douglas DC-7, crashes during an aborted landing  due to extremely heavy fog, at Idlewild Airport in New York, killing 25 of the 51 passengers and crew aboard.

1982 – Michael Jackson’s sixth solo studio album, Thriller, is released worldwide, ultimately becoming the best selling record album in history.

1995 – Operation Desert Storm officially ends.

1999 – Exxon and Mobil sign a $73.7 billion agreement to merge, creating ExxonMobil, the largest company in the world

2001 – Gary Ridgway is apprehended in Renton Washington, and charged with four murders. He is eventually convicted of a total of 49 murders as the Green River Killer and sentenced to 49 consecutive terms of life imprisonment, plus 10 years.

2007 – Robert ‘Evel’ Knievel dies, age 69, on the way from his home to the hospital in Clearwater, Florida.

2018 – Former President George H. W. Bush dies, age 94 at his home in Houston, Texas.

2021 – A 15 year old student shoots and murders 4 students and wounds 7 more people, including a teacher, at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan.