1988 – 270 people were killed when Pan Am Boeing 747 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, due to a terrorist attack.
1237 – Mongolian forces take the Russian city of Ryazan after a five-day siege during their invasion of the Rus
1620 – The “Mayflower”, and its passengers, pilgrims from England, landed at Plymouth Rock, MA.
1788 – Hue Tay Son becomes emperor Quang Trung of Vietnam
1829 – 1st stone arch railroad bridge in US dedicated, Baltimore
1872 – Phileas Fogg wins his wager, The fictional character created by French writer Jules Verne for his book, Around the World in Eighty Days, finished circumnavigating the world and reached London to win the wager he had set with his friends. The date also coincides with the publication of the last of the series that ended up becoming the now popular science fiction novel.
1864 – General Sherman conquers Savannah, Georgia
1866 – Fetterman Massacre: Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians kill all 81 US Army soldiers in the worst military disaster ever suffered by the U.S. Army on the Great Plains
1879 – Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” was first performed in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a revised happy ending.
1898 – Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium.
1906 – British Parliament pass two important pieces of social legislation: The Trades Disputes Bill, legalizing peaceful picketing, and The Workingmen’s Compensation Act, broadening employers’ liability for accidents
1909 – McKinley and Washington schools of Berkeley, CA, became the first authorized, junior-high schools in the U.S.
1910 – Explosion in coal mine in Hulton England, 344 mine workers dies
1913 – Arthur Wynne published a new “word-cross” puzzle in the “New York World” in England. The name was later changed to “crossword.”
1914 – Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Mack Swain appeared in the first six-reel, feature-length comedy. The film was entitled “Tillie’s Punctured Romance”.
1919 – J. Edgar Hoover deports anarchists/feminist Emma Goldman to Russia
1921 – Supreme Court rules labor injunctions & picketing unconstitutional
1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs released, The movie made by Walt Disney Productions was the world’s first full-length animated feature film and it was based on a German fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm.
1939 – Adolf Hitler names Adolf Eichmann leader of “Referat IV B”, responsible for evictions and Jewish immigration
1944 – Horse racing was banned in the United States until after the end of World War II.
1945 – U.S. Gen. George S. Patton died in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident.
1948 – The state of Eire (formerly the Irish Free State) declared its independence.
1958 – Charles de Gaulle was elected to a seven-year term as the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.
1959 – Citizens of Deerfield Ill block building of interracial housing
1962 – US & Cuba negotiate accord for Cuba to release “Bay of Pigs” captives in exchange for $23M worth of medicine and baby food
1968 – Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon. The craft landed safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27.
1970 – Elvis Presley meets US President Richard Nixon in the White House – the image of this meeting is the most requested photo from the entire National Archives
1970 – Oregon v. Mitchell Supreme Court case was decided, lowering the minimum voting age in U.S. federal elections to 18. The voting age for state and local elections was left to states discretion
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.
1987 – 3 white NY teens convicted of manslaughter in death of a black man
1988 – 270 people were killed when Pan Am Boeing 747 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, due to a terrorist attack.
1988 – Drexel agrees guilt to security felonies, pays a $650 million fine
1989 – VP Quayle sends out 30,000 Xmas cards with word beacon spelled beakon
1990 – In a German television interview, Saddam Hussein declared that he would not withdraw from Kuwait by the UN deadline.
1994 – Bomb goes off on #4 train on Fulton Street NYC
1995 – The city of Bethlehem passed 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.
1998 – The first vaccine for Lyme disease was approved.
2001 – The Islamic militant group Hamas released a statement that said it was suspending suicide bombings and mortar attacks in Israel.
2007 – The Schengen Agreement area increases to include 9 European Union member states; Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia on land and sea borders.
2012 – The NHL announces a further cancellation of games until January 14 bringing the total number of cancelled games to 625
2016 – Carl Icahn is announced as Special Advisor to the President on Regulatory Reform, under President Donald Trump
2017 – UN General Assembly votes 128 to 9 to denounce US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
2020 – United States attorney general announces charges against Libyan Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, accusing him of involvement in constructing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on the 32nd anniversary of the disaster
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
