TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 21
68 Vespian, a gruff-spoken general of humble origins, enters Rome and is named emperor by the Senate.
1620 The Pilgrims land at or near Plymouth Rock.
1862 The U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor to be awarded to Navy personnel who have distinguished themselves by their gallantry in action.
1866 Indians, led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, kill Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 other men who had ventured out from Fort Phil Kearny to cut wood.
1879 Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” was first performed in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a revised happy ending.
1891 1st game of basketball, based on rules created by James Naismith, played by 18 students in Springfield, Massachusetts
1898 French Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium
1902 A group of investors planned to spend $5,000,000-$15,000,000 to build flour mills in major cities in Ireland. The Irish flour business was failing due to importing grain from America and other countries.
1928 President Calvin Coolidge signs the Boulder Dam bill.
1937 The first full-length animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre
1945 General George S. Patton dies at the age of 60 after being injured in a car accident.
1964 Great Britain’s House of Commons votes to ban the death penalty.
1965 The human rights convention was adopted by the United Nations’ member states and was put into force on January 4, 1969. It attempts to eliminate racial discrimination in the world.
1965 Four pacifists are indicted in New York for burning draft cards — Thomas C. Cornell, 31, co-secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship; Roy Lisker, 27, a volunteer of the Catholic Worker Movement; James E. Wilson, 21, a volunteer at the Catholic Worker Movement and a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation; and M P, Edelman, a full-time worker for the War Resisters League.
1969 American draft evaders gather for a holiday dinner in Montreal, Canada.
1970 Elvis Presley met with president Richard Nixon in the White House.
1978 Police in Des Plaines, IL, arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of killing.
1985 Terry Waite, representing the Anglican Church, negotiated with Moslem kidnappers to try freeing their American captives for Christmas. He said that he would like to keep a low profile while the negotiations proceeded.
1988 Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, an hour after departure. All 259 passengers were killed in the explosion caused by a bomb– hidden inside an audio cassette player — that detonated inside the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. A shower of airplane parts falling from the sky also killed 11 Lockerbie residents.
1991 Eleven of the former Soviet republics form the Commonwealth of Independent States.
1995 The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
1996 After two years of denials, U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted violating House ethics rules.
1998 Israel’s parliament voted overwhelmingly for early elections. It was the signal to the demise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government.
2001 The Islamic militant group Hamas released a statement that said it was suspending suicide bombings and mortar attacks in Israel.
2004 A suicide bomber attacks the forward operating base next to the US military airfield at Mosul, Iraq, killing 22 people; it is the deadliest suicide attack on US soldiers during the Iraq War.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
