This day in history.....

December 9th


1793: American lexicographer Noah Webster establishes New York's first daily newspaper, The Minerva.


1940: Britain launches its first major offensive against Italian-dominated North Africa at Sidi Barrani in northeastern Egypt.


1941: China declares war on Japan, Germany, and Italy.

1958: Robert H. Welch, Jr., founds the John Birch Society to fight the infiltration of communism into American society.
 
December 10th


1869: Wyoming becomes the first state to adopt woman suffrage.


1898: In France, the Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Spanish-American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire.


1901: The first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace.


1902: The Aswan Dam on the Nile in Egypt officially opens, having been started in 1898. It is the largest dam in the world.


1948: The United Nations adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, marking the birth of the modern human rights movement
 
December 11th



1936: Edward VIII, king of Great Britain and Ireland for 325 days, becomes the first English monarch to abdicate the throne voluntarily.


1941: Two days after Congress passed a declaration of war against Japan, Germany and Italy declare war against the United States.


1946: The United Nations establishes the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to provide relief and support to children living in countries devastated by war.


1997: Delegates at the Kyoto, Japan, conference on global warming agree to cut emission of greenhouse gases by 5.2% of 1990 levels during the years 2008 to 2012.
 
December 12th


1256: Pope Alexander IV organizes Italian hermits independently following the rule of Saint Augustine into a single order, the Augustinian Hermits or Friars.


1870: Joseph Hayne Rainey becomes the first African-American sworn into the House of Representatives.


1899: The golf tee is patented.


1901: The first transatlantic radio transmission is received.


1937: Japanese warplanes sink the U.S. gunboat Panay during the battle for Nanking, China, in the Sino-Japanese War.

1989: The United Nations adopts the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
 
December 13th


1621: Under the care of Robert Cushman, the first American furs to be exported from the continent leave for England.


1642: Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.


1769: Dartmouth College is chartered.

1862: Outnumbered Confederate forces defeat Union troops at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia.


1979: The first Susan B. Anthony dollar coin is minted.


2003: U.S. troops capture ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who is found hiding in a small underground chamber dubbed a "spider hole."
 
December 14th


1819: Alabama is the 22nd state to join the Union.


1902: The cableship Silverton begins laying the first transpacific telegraph cable, which reaches from San Francisco to Honolulu.


1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first person to reach the South Pole.


1946: The United Nations General Assembly establishes permanent U.N. headquarters in New York City.


1955: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Finland, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, and Spain are admitted to the United Nations (U.N.).
 
December 15th


1791: The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, become law following ratification by the state of Virginia.


1874: Hawaiian King David Kalakaua visits President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House, becoming the first reigning king to visit the United States.

1890: In South Dakota, Sioux leader Sitting Bull is arrested on suspicion of leading an uprising, then killed in a subsequent gunfight.


1965: Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 rendezvous in space, orbiting the Earth together for over five hours.
 
December 17th


1777: France officially recognizes the United States' independence.


1903: Orville Wright makes the first successful flight in an airplane with a gasoline engine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, covering 37 m (120 ft) in a flight lasting just 12 seconds.


1941: Rear Admiral Chester Nimitz takes command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.


1963: The U.S. Congress passes the Clean Air Act, a sweeping set of laws designed to protect the environment from air pollution.
 
December 18th


1787: New Jersey ratifies the U.S. Constitution.


1865: Following its ratification earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution takes effect, ensuring that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist within the United States."


1957: The first full-scale commercial nuclear power station in the United States opens at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. It produces 60,000 kilowatts of electricity.


1958: Project Score, the world's first experimental communications satellite, is launched.
 
Mare said:
1957: The first full-scale commercial nuclear power station in the United States opens at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. It produces 60,000 kilowatts of electricity.
Click to expand...

And it still hasn't had a reportable accident... :lloyd:
 
December 19th


1776: Thomas Paine publishes the first installment of The American Crisis.


1777: The Continental Army under General George Washington enters its winter camp at Valley Forge, twenty miles from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


1950: U.S. President Harry S. Truman names General Dwight D. Eisenhower to command the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces.


1975: The Altair 8800, a do-it-yourself computer kit, goes on sale for $397.

1984: Britain formally agrees to return Hong Kong to China after 99 years under British rule.
 
highwayman said:
I know some people that operate at this level, but the altair 8800 has a faster processor.
Click to expand...
There are a few of those folks around, aren't there?

*edit: Like the folks who can't spell folks, huh?*
 
December 21

1620: The first group of colonists disembark from the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock.


1913: The New York World newspaper prints the first modern crossword puzzle in the United States.


1937: The animated motion picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiers.

1956: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.


1968: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard.
 
December 22


1807: Congress passes the Embargo Act, which bars trading between the United States and European nations.


1845: The first voice synthesizer, later known as P.T. Barnum's Euphonium, is demonstrated to the public.


1894: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason by a military court-martial.


1894: The U.S. Golf Association is founded.


1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill begin their first official conference in Washington, D.C.
 
December 23rd


1783: Army commander-in-chief George Washington retires.


1913: The U.S. Congress passes the Federal Reserve Act, establishing a Federal Reserve Board with power over monetary policy and creating the nation's first central banking system since the 1830s.


1947: The transistor is invented.


1948: In Tokyo, Japan, Tojo Hideki, former Japanese prime minister and chief of the Kwantung Army, is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II.


1986: The experimental plane Voyager completes its global flight.
 
December 26th


1776: American forces under George Washington raid British Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Trenton, Pennsylvania.

1865: The coffee percolator is patented.


1941: Winston Churchill becomes the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.


1966: Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach, organizes the first Kwanzaa celebration in Los Angeles, California.
 
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