TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: DEC 6
1240 Mongols under Batu Khan occupy and destroy Kiev; out of 50,000 people in the city only 2,000 survive
1492 Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Santo Domingo in search of gold.
1735 In London, French surgeon Claudius Amyand peformed the first successful appendectomy at St. George’s Hospital. The patient was an 11-year old boy that had swallowed a pin.
1768 1st edition of “Encyclopedia Brittanica” published (Scotland)
1776 Phi Beta Kappa, the first scholastic fraternity, is founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
1812 The majority of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Armeé staggers into Vilna, Lithuania, ending the failed Russian campaign.
1862 President Abraham Lincoln orders the hanging of 39 of the 303 convicted Indians who participated in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. They are to be hanged on December 26.
1865 The 13th Amendment is ratified, abolishing slavery.
1876 1st crematorium in US begins operation, Washington PA
1877 Thomas A. Edison makes the first sound recording when he recites “Mary had a Little Lamb” into his phonograph machine.
1884 The construction of the Washington Monument was completed by Army engineers. The project took 34 years.
1906 Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge flies a powered, man-carrying kite that carries him 168 feet in the air for seven minutes at Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
1917 The Bolsheviks imprison Czar Nicholas II and his family in Tobolsk.
1917 Finnish Declaration of Independence. The declaration ended 109 years of Finland being a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire.
1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty signed; Ireland receives dominion status; partition creates Northern Ireland
1922 Benito Mussolini threatens Italian newspapers with censorship if they keep reporting “false” information.
1923 A presidential address was broadcast on the radio for the first time when Calvin Coolidge spoke before Congress.
1947 Florida’s Everglades National Park is established.
1948 The “Pumpkin Spy Papers” are found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers. They become evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss is spying for the Soviet Union.
1967 World’s first pediatric heart transplant
1969 Hells Angels, hired to provide security at a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, beat to death concert-goer Meredith Hunter.
1973 US House of Representatives confirms Gerald Ford as Vice-President of the United States, 387–35.
1976 Democrat Tip O’Neill is elected speaker of the House of Representatives. He will serve the longest consecutive term as speaker.
1977 South Africa grants independence to Bophuthatswana. The Republic of Bophuthatswana was never internationally recognized. In 1994, after a series of coups, it reintegrated with South Africa.
1982 11 soldiers and 6 civilians were killed when a bomb exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland. The Irish National Liberation Army was responsible for planting the bomb.
1989 The worst mass shooting in Canadian history occurred when a man gunned down 14 women at the University of Montreal’s school of engineering. The man then killed himself.
1992 The destruction of a mosque in India by Hindu extremists set off two months of Muslim-Hindu fighting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.
1998 In Venezuela, former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was elected president. He had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier.
2006 NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
