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