1980 – John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group that transformed popular music in the 1960s, is shot and killed by an obsessed fan in New York City.
1609 – Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan opens its reading room, second public library in Europe
1710 – Battle of Brihuega in the War of the Spanish Succession: British General James Stanhope captured by French & Spanish forces
1776 – George Washington’s retreating army in the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.
1854 – Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The theory holds that Mary, mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment she was conceived.
1863 – 2,500 reported killed as result of fire at Jesuit Church of La Compana, Santiago, Chile
1863 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln announced his plan for the Reconstruction of the South.
1863 – Tom King of England defeated American John Heenan and became the first world heavyweight champion.
1881 – Vienna’s Ring Theater destroyed by gaslight fire, killing an estimated 384-1000 people
1886 – At a convention of union leaders in Columbus, OH, the American Federation of Labor was founded.
1902 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr became Associate Justice on US Supreme Court
1914 – Boers rebelling against the British in South Africa suffer several defeats, with one of their leaders, General Beyers, accidentally drowning
1923 – German-US friendship treaty signed
1933 – French nun Bernadette Soubirous, who saw the vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, is canonized by the Catholic Church
1935 – The Japanese military police launches a violent suppression of the religious sect Oomoto, beginning with a crackdown on the sect’s operational bases of Ayabe and Kameoka in Kyoto Prefecture and the arrest of its leader Onisaburo Deguchi.
1936 – NAACP files suit to equalize salaries of black & white teachers
1941 – San Francisco 1st blackout, at 6:15 PM
1941 – The United States entered World War II when it declared war against Japan. The act came one day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Britain and Canada also declared war on Japan.
1948 – Jordan annexes Arabic Palestine
1949 – The Chinese Nationalist government moved from the Chinese mainland to Formosa due to Communists pressure.
1952 – On the show “I Love Lucy,” a pregnancy was acknowledged in a TV show for the first time.
1953 – Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations in New York
1962 – Workers of the International Typographical Union began striking and closed nine New York City newspapers. The strike lasted 114 days and ended April 1, 1963.
1963 – Frank Sinatra, Jr is kidnapped at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe (Nevada)
1963 – Pan Am Flight 214 crashes outside Elkton, Maryland with 81 killed
1966 – US and USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space
1972 – United Airlines crashes at Chicago’s Midway Airport killing 45
1980 – Annie Leibovitz has a photo-shoot with John Lennon, the last person to professionally photograph him before he is murdered on the same day
1980 – John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group that transformed popular music in the 1960s, is shot and killed by an obsessed fan in New York City. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-lennon-shot
1980 – Zimbabwe’s manpower minister, Edgar Tekere, was found guilty in the killing of a white farmer. He was freed under a law that protected ministers acting to suppress terrorism.
1982 – Norman D. Mayer demanding an end to nuclear weapons held the Washington Monument hostage. He threatened to blow it up with explosives he claimed were inside a van. 10 hours later he was shot to death by police.
1984 – In Roanoke, Virginia, a jury found Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt innocent of libeling Reverend Jerry Falwell with a parody advertisement. However Falwell was awarded $200,000 for emotional distress.
1987 – U.S. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty agreeing to destroy their nations’ arsenals of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
1987 – The “intefadeh” (Arabic for uprising) by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories began.
1989 – Communist leaders in Czechoslovakia offered to surrender their control over the government and accept a minority role in a coalition Cabinet.
1991 – Romanian Constitution comes into force, Passed through a referendum, the Constitution marked a return to democracy for Romania after 42 years of Communist rule.
1991 – Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine declared the Soviet national government to be dead. They forged a new alliance to be known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. The act was denounced by Russian President Gorbachev as unconstitutional.
1992 – Americans got to see live television coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. (Due to the time difference, it was December 9 in Somalia.)
1993 – U.S. President Clinton signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1994 – Bosnian Serbs released dozens of hostage peacekeepers, but continued to detain about 300 others.
1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police could not search a person or their cars after ticketing for a routine traffic violation.
1998 – The FBI opened its files on Frank Sinatra to the public. The file contained over 1,300 pages.
1999 – In Memphis, TN, a jury found that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been the victim of a vast murder conspiracy, not a lone assassin.
1999 – Russia and Belarus agreed in principle to form an economic and political confederation.
2005 – Ante Gotovina, Croatian army general accused of war crimes, is captured in the Playa de las Américas, Tenerife by the Spanish police.
2009 – Bombings in Baghdad, Iraq kill 127 and injure 448.
2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
2011 – The NBA and players union reach financial agreement to end a 161-day lockout, shortening the season by 16 games
2019 – Fire in an illegal bag factory in Delhi, India, kills 43
2020 – Former Israeli space security chief Haim Eshed says Aliens and a Galactic Federation exist and Donald Trump knows about it, in article published in the Jerusalem Post
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
