TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 7
43 BC Cicero, considered one of the greatest sons of Rome, is assassinated on the orders of Marcus Antonius.
983 Otto III takes the throne after his father’s death in Italy. A power struggle between magnates ensues.
1787 Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
1861 USS Santiago de Cuba, under Commander Daniel B. Ridgely, halts the British schooner Eugenia Smith and captures J.W. Zacharie, a New Orleans merchant and Confederate purchasing agent.
1863 Outlaw George Ives, an alleged member of an outlaw gang known as the “Innocents,” robs and then kills Nick Thiebalt in the Ruby Valley of what would become Montana.
1909 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermo-setting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry
1917 The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary with only one dissenting vote in Congress.
1931 A report indicates that Nazis would ensure “Nordic dominance” by sterilizing certain races.
1941 Japanese planes raid Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a surprise attack, bringing the US into WWII.
1942 The U.S. Navy launches USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.
1945 Microwave oven patented
1962 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1968 Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather borrowed in 1823 to the University of Cincinatti; the $22,646 fine went unpaid
1970 Poland and West Germany sign a pact renouncing the use of force to settle disputes, recognizing the Oder-Neisse River as Poland’s western frontier, and acknowledging the transfer to Poland of 40,000 square miles of former German territory.
1972 The crew of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, lifts off at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor, leading to a 25-year occupation.
1981 The Reagan Administration predicts a record deficit in 1982 of $109 billion.
1982 Fifteen prominent Surinamese men were kidnapped and subsequently murdered over 3 days by the military government. The men were known to have criticized the military dictatorship.
1988 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat recognizes Israel’s right to exist.
1995 Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter after a 6-year journey.
1999 The Recording Industry Association of America files a copyright infringement suit against the file-sharing website Napster.
2001 Taliban forces fled from Kandahar, their last stronghold in Afghanistan.
2002 Iraq formally declared to the UN that it had no weapons of mass destruction.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
