TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: DEC 11
1620 Mayflower Pilgrims come ashore at in Plymouth Bay, traditionally thought to be at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts [NS, Dec 21]
1688 James II abdicates the throne because of William of Orange landing in England.
1719 The first recorded sighting of the aurora borealis took place in New England.
1792 France’s King Louis XVI went before the Convention, which had replaced the National Assembly, to face charges of treason. He was convicted and condemned and was sent to the guillotine the following January.
1816 Indiana is admitted to the Union as the 19th state.
1844 Dr. Horace Wells became the first person to have a tooth extracted after receiving an anesthetic for the dental procedure. Nitrous Oxide, or laughing gas, was the anesthetic.
1863 Union gunboats Restless, Bloomer and Caroline enter St. Andrew’s Bay, Fla., and begin bombardment of both Confederate quarters and saltworks
1909 Colored moving pictures demonstrated at Madison Square Garden, New York NY
1917 13 black soldiers hanged for alleged participation in Houston riot
1927 Nearly 400 world leaders sign a letter to President Calvin Coolidge asking the United States to join the World Court.
1931 Statute of Westminster gives complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland (Free State), and Newfoundland (not then part of Canada)
1933 Reports say Paraguay has captured 11,000 Bolivians in the war over Chaco.
1941 The United States declares war on Italy and Germany.
1946 UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) established (Nobel 1965)
1955 Israel raids Syrian positions on the Sea of Galilee.
1961 Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of war crimes, in Israel
1964 Frank Sinatra, Jr., is returned home to his parents after being kidnapped for the ransom amount of $240,000.
1967 The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world’s first supersonic airliner, is unveiled in Toulouse, France.
1972 Challenger, the lunar lander for Apollo 17, touches down on the moon’s surface, the last time that men visit the moon.
1978 6 masked men bound 10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at New York Kennedy Airport & made off with $5.8 million in cash & jewelry
1978 Massive demonstrations take place in Tehran against the shah.
1980 U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed into law legislation creating $1.6 billion environmental “superfund” that would be used to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps.
1981 Military forces in El Salvador kill over 800 civilians in what is known as the El Mozote massacre during the Salvadoran Civil War.
1994 Russian troups invaded Chechnya in an unsuccessful attempt to restore Moscow’s power in the region.
1997 Housing secretary Henry Cisneros was indicted for conspiracy, obstructing justice, and false statements to the FBI.
1998 The Mars Climate Orbiter blasted off on a nine-month journey to the Red Planet. However, the probe disappeared in September of 1999, apparently destroyed because scientists had failed to convert English measures to metric values.
2001 People’s Republic of China joins the World Trade Organization.
2001 U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft announced the first federal indictment directly related to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Zacarias Moussaoui was charged with six conspiracy charges. Moussaoui was in custody at the time of the attacks.
2008 Bernard “Bernie” Madoff arrested and charged with securities fraud in what was called a $50-billion Ponzi scheme.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
