1941 – Pearl Harbor, located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu was attacked by nearly 200 Japanese warplanes. The attack resulted in the U.S. entering into World War II.
43 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman orator and politician is assassinated in Formiae
185 – Emperor Lo-Yang, China sees supernova (MSH15-52)
1431 – In Paris, Henry VI of England was crowned King of France.
1696 – Connecticut Route 108, one of the oldest highways in the U.S. is completed to Trumbull.
1703 – Great storm of 1703 hits Southern England – thousands killed, Royal Navy losses 13 ships and around 1,500 seamen
1724 – Tumult of Thorn – religious unrest was followed by the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toruń) by Polish authorities.
1787 – Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. constitution becoming the first of the United States.
1804 – Naturalist Alexander von Humboldt reports his discovery of the decrease in intensity of Earth’s magnetic field from the poles to the equator in a memoir to the Paris Institute
1868 – Jesse James gang robs bank in Gallatin Missouri, kills 1
1875 – Natives Sons of the West organized
1902 – Britain and Germany issue an ultimatum to Venezuela demanding that President Cipriano Castro pay claims for damages caused during his takeover of the government in 1899
1907 – At London’s National Sporting Club, Eugene Corri became the first referee to officiate from inside a boxing ring.
1917 – The USA’s 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division arrives in France (with Colonel Douglass MacArthur among its ranks)
1926 – The gas operated refrigerator was patented by The Electrolux Servel Corporation.
1934 – Wiley Post discovers the jet stream
1941 – Pearl Harbor, located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu was attacked by nearly 200 Japanese warplanes. The attack resulted in the U.S. entering into World War II. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor
1946 – A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta killed 119 people. It was America’s worst hotel fire disaster. The hotel founder, W. Frank Winecoff, was also killed in the fire.
1949 – Chiang Kai-shek flees to Taiwan
1963 – First use of the instant replay machine invented by CBS in a US Army vs Navy football game
1968 – Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather took out in 1823 from the University of Cincinnati
1972 – Apollo 17 launched, the final manned lunar landing mission where the crew takes the famous “blue marble” photo of the entire Earth
1972 – Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was stabbed and seriously wounded by an assailant. The man was then shot and killed by her bodyguards.
1974 – President Makarios returned to Cyprus after five months in exile.
1980 – General Antonio Ramlho Eanes was reelected president of Portugal. His right-wing opposition was thrown into disarray by the death of Premier Francisco Sa Carneiro in a plane crash.
1982 – Dos Erres massacre in Guatemala during country’s civil war, 171 people killed led by Santos López Alonzo
1982 – Charlie Brooks Junior, a convicted murderer, became the first prisoner in the U.S. to be executed by injection, at a prison in Huntsville, TX.
1982 – December Murders in Suriname, 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.
1986 – President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees Haiti
1987 – Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev set foot on American soil for the first time. He had come to the U.S. for a Washington summit with U.S. President Reagan.
1987 – 43 people were killed when a gunman opened fire on a fellow passenger and the two pilots aboard a Pacific Southwest Airlines jetliner.
1988 – PLO delegation lead by Yasser Arafat proclaims the State of Palestine, recognizing the existence of the State of Israel for the first time
1992 – The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Mississippi abortion law which, required women to get counseling and then wait 24 hours before terminating their pregnancies.
1993 – Six people were killed and 17 were injured when a gunman opened fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train.
1993 – Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary revealed that the U.S. government had conducted more than 200 nuclear weapons tests in secret at its Nevada test site.
1993 – Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders suggested that the U.S. government study the impact of drug legalization.
1995 – A probe sent from the Galileo spacecraft entered into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The probe sent back data to the mothership before it was presumably destroyed.
1998 – The U.N. evacuated 14 peacekeepers that were trapped by fighting between army and rebel forces in central Angola.
1998 – U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of President Clinton over 1996 campaign financing.
1999 – A U.S. federal grand jury indicted a former convict in the 1995 disappearance of atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
2002 – In Mymensingh, Bangladesh, four movies theaters were bombed within 30 minutes of each other. At least 15 people were killed and over 200 were injured.
2004 – Hamid Karzai takes office, The Afghan politician took office as the President of the Islamic Republic in Afghanistan’s first direct democratic elections in history.
2005 – Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of US federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.
2014 – Mayor of Paris calls for diesel cars to be banned from the French Capital by 2020, in order to reduce pollution
2014 – The Archbishop of Canterbury claims that he is more shocked by the plight of Britain’s hunger-stricken poor than suffering in African refugee camps
2015 – US Presidential candidate Donald Trump proposes banning all Muslims from entering the US
2017 – Former US gymnastics physician Larry Nasser is sentenced to 60 years on child pornography charges
2017 – Unrest in West Bank and Gaza, schools closed and a general strike in response to America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
2018 – Brazilian spiritual healer João Teixeira de Faria accused of sexual abuse by four women, over 200 more come forward in next week
2018 – Court filings by US federal prosecutors and Special Counsel Robert Mueller against Michael Cohen appear to implicate President Donald Trump on campaign fraud and Russian dealings
2020 – Breaking, the competitive form of breakdancing, confirmed as an Olympic sport for the Paris 2024 games
2020 – Coca-Cola named the world’s No. 1 plastic polluter, in Break Free From Plastic’s annual brand audit
2021 – Chile becomes the 31st nation to legalize same-sex marriage
2021 – US President Joe Biden warns Russian President Vladimir Putin of economic consequences if Russia continues a military build-up in Ukraine, during a virtual meeting
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
