Category: Today
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.
November 29
1114 – A large earthquake damages areas the Crusaders in the Middle East rule, hitting the cities of Antioch, Mamistra, Marash and Edessa, with over 40,000 people killed.
1729 – Natchez Indians massacre 138 French men, 35 women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern day Natchez, Mississippi.
1776 – During the American Revolutionary War, a 500 man, but poorly supplied, American force besieging Fort Cumberland, near the present day border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, is repulsed when British Marine reinforcements arrive
1777 – San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga.
1783 – An earthquake later calculated at measuring magnitude 5.3 on the Richter scale, strikes New Jersey, to date the most powerful quake in the state.
1847 – Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed at their mission near present day Walla Walla Washington, by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War east of the Cascade mountain range.
1864 – Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants near Sand Creek in Colorado Territory.
1872 – The Modoc War in northeastern California and southeastern Oregon begins with the Battle of Lost River between a small force of U.S. troops under Captain James Jackson, and Modoc warriors under Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack.
1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.
1890 –The US Army and Navy academy’s foot ball teams play their first game with Navy beating Army 24-0 at West Point.
1902 – The Pittsburgh Stars defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, at Pittsburg 11–0 to win the first championship associated with an American national professional football league.
1910 The first US patent for inventing a traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine.
1929 – Admiral Richard Byrd leads the first expedition to fly over the South Pole.
1942 – During World War II, the US Office of Price Administration begins the rationing of coffee a 10 pound a year
1947 – The United Nations General Assembly approves a plan for the partition of Palestine.
1953 – American Airlines begins the 1st regular commercial New York to Los Angeles air service
1963 – President Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.
1972 – Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.
1999 – Kazuo Sakamaki, a former ensign in the Imperial Japanese Navy, the skipper of midget submarine H-19 which attempted to attack Pearl Harbor, and the first official U.S. prisoner of war in World War II, dies, age 81, in Tokyo.
2009 – 4 police officers are shot and killed in a gunfight inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington by Maurice Clemmons, who escapes wounded and is shot and killed 2 days later by police in Seattle.
2013 – LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, an Embraer 190, is crashed in the Bwabata National Park, Namibia, by the pilot in a mass murder-suicide, killing all 33 passengers and crew on board.
November 28
1520 – After 38 days, the naval expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan completes the first passage through the Strait of Magellan and enters the Pacific Ocean.
1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell is signed, where the U.S. acknowledges Cherokee lands in what is now eastern Tennessee.
1794 – Former Continental Army Inspector Major General, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben dies, age 64 at his estate in Oneida County – later Steuben – New York.
1798 – Trade between the United States and modern day Uruguay begins when John Leamy’s frigate John arrives in Montevideo.
1811 – Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.
1821 – The nation of Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia.
1843 – The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.
1895 – The first American automobile road race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.
1908 – An explosion in the Pittsburg Buffalo Company’s mine in Marianna, Pennsylvania, kills 154 men, leaving only 1 survivor.
1912 – Taking advantage of the turmoil caused by the First Balkan War, Albania, which was not one of the belligerents, declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1914 – Closed in July due to the outbreak of war in Europe, the New York Stock Exchange reopens for bond trading.
1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee on clear channel radio station WSM.
1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people
1943 – During World War II, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.
1958 – The U.S. makes the first successful flight of the SM-65 Atlas, the first operational intercontinental U.S. ballistic missile.
1964 –National Security Council members agree to recommend that President Johnson adopt a plan for a two stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.
1965 – In response to President Johnson’s call for “more flags” in Vietnam, Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.
1967 – The first pulsar, PSR B1919+21, is discovered in the constellation of Vulpecula by astronomers Jocelyn Burnell and Antony Hewish at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge, England.
1971 – Wasfi al-Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, is assassinated by the Black September unit of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer completes his life imprisonment term for multiple murders by being murdered himself by another inmate.
2016 – A chartered Avro RJ85 plane carrying 77 people, including the Chapecoense football team, crashes near Medellín, Colombia.
2020 – David Prowse, English weight-lifting champion, and the actor who portrayed Darth Vader in the original trilogy, dies, age 85, in London.
November 27
1095 – In support of the Byzantine Empire’s request for military assistance, Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade to recover the Holy Land from moslem rule, at the Council of Clermont.
1727 – The foundation stone to the Jerusalem Church in Berlin is laid.
1839 – The American Statistical Association is founded in Boston
1868 – Lieutenant Colonel George Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land along the Washita river
1895 – At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.
1896 – Also sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, is first performed in Frankfurt Germany
1901 – The U.S. Army War College is established.
1924 – In New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
1934 – Mortally wounded in a gun fight with 4 F.B.I. agents in Barrington, Illinois, near Chicago, Gangster George ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, age 25, escapes after killing 1 and mortally wounding another of the agents and finally dies in a safehouse in Wilmette. His body is dumped in a cemetery in Skokie by his wife and his accomplice John Chase
1945 – The Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe is founded to a send CARE Packages of food relief to Europe after World War II.
1965 – Pentagon advisors tell President Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.
1973 – By terms of the 25th amendment, the Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Michigan Representative Gerald Ford’s nomination as Vice President of the United States.
1978 – In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White, opening the way for the President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dianne Feinstein to be appointed as Mayor and starting her ascent to higher political offices.
1989 – The Medellín Cartel places a bomb aboard Avianca Flight 203, a Boeing 727, which explodes in mid air over Soacha, Colombia, killing all 107 passengers and crew on board and 3 people on the ground.
1991 – The United Nations Security Council adopts Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in the states of the former Yugoslavia.
2001 – A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris of the star HD 209458 in the constellation of Pegasus, by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.
2015 – A man enters a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, shooting and killing 2 and wounding 6 and later wounds 4 responding Colorado Springs Police Officers with 1 officer later dying, before surrendering.
2020 – Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, is assassinated while traveling to his vacation villa in the city of Absard near Tehran.
November 26
1476 – Vlad III Țepeș, known as ‘The Impaler’, defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.
1778 – Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui in the Hawaiian islands.
1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President Washington at the request of Congress.
1863 – President Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. Since 1941, it has been on the 4th Thursday.
1917 – The Manchester Guardian publishes the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France with Italian and Russian agreement on their plans on how to partition the Ottoman empire as it collapsed during World War I.
1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun
1926 – John Moses Browning dies, age 71, of heart failure while at his work bench in his son’s design shop at Fabrique Nationale in Herstal, Belgium.
1941 – On the same day that Japan’s 1st Air Fleet, under the command of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo departs Hitokappu Bay, enroute to Hawaii, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivers a note to the Japanese envoy Saburō Kurusu in Washington D.C., demanding that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina, in return for which the U.S. would lift economic sanctions.
1942 – Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.
1943 – While flight leader, launched off the USS Enterprise on the first night fighter mission to engage Japanese bombers attacking the carrier task force, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Edward O’Hare, earlier recipient of the Medal of Honor, is shot down in action and lost at sea.
1950 – During the Korean War, troops from the People’s Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces along the Ch’ongch’on River and around the Chosin Reservoir
1968 – U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot 1st Lieutenant James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces CCC MACV-SOG unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire near near Đức Cơ and is awarded the Medal of Honor in May 1970 for his actions in combat.
1990 – During a night flying weapons test, at Fort Campbell Kentucky, U.S Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Vincent and Chief Warrant 3 Richard Walsh, assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company USASOC, are killed when their OH-6 helicopter crashes .
2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida’s electoral votes of the 2000 Presidential election by Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris.
2003 – The Concorde airliner makes its final flight over Bristol, England.
2011 The Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover aboard.
2021 – The World Health Organization identifies the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.