TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 8
1776 George Washington’s retreating army in the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.
1854 Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
1861 CSS Sumter captures the whaler Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry.
1863 Abraham Lincoln issues his Amnesty Proclamation and plan for Reconstruction of the South
1886 The American Federation of Labor was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio.
1914 The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
1920 President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.1948 The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.
1941 Congress declared war on Japan and the U.S. entered World War II.
1962 Workers of the International Typographical Union began striking and closed nine New York City newspapers. The strike lasted 114 days and ended April 1, 1963.
1965 England- A new Race Relations Act comes into force forbidding discrimination on the “grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins” in public places and covers both British residents and overseas visitors.
1967 In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.
1968 South Vietnam’s Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.
1980 John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.
1982 Norman David Mayer an American anti-nuclear weapons activist is shot and killed by the United States Park Police after threatening to use 1,000 pounds of TNT loaded in his van to blow up the Washington Monument. When he drives off to carry out his threat the police are forced to shoot him
1984 In Roanoke, Virginia, a jury found Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt innocent of libeling Reverend Jerry Falwell with a parody advertisement. However Falwell was awarded $200,000 for emotional distress.
1987 U.S. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty agreeing to destroy their nations’ arsenals of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
1987 An Israeli army tank transporter kills 4 Palestinian refugees and injures 7 others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to the First Intifada.
1991 The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.
1992 The United Nations intervention in Somalia OPERATION RESTORE HOPE a UN sanctioned US military operation begins. The operation was planned to avert the growing humanitarian disaster of severe famine and general chaos.
1993 President Bill Clinton signed The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into law.
1995 England – As gang violence in schools in inner cities continues to be a problem a head teacher ( Philip Lawrence ) is stabbed to death in an inner city London School while protecting a pupil who was being assaulted
1998 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police could not search a person or their cars after ticketing for a routine traffic violation
2004 A two month state of emergency was declared by the Iraq government as rebels stepped up their attacks and the American military fought back. U.S. forces stormed the city of Fallujah and pummelled it with an AC-130 gun ship shooting 40 mm cannon fire.
2009 The Obama administration has announced that it would pay Native Americans $3.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit that claims the federal government cheated them for more than a century of royalties for oil, mineral and other leases.
2011 In November 2011, The Washington Post revealed that the Dover Air Base had been disposing of military remains in a Virginia landfill but did not know how many remains were involved. The newspaper discovered that data from the US Air Force revealed that between 2004 and 2008 274 military personnel’s remains had been taken to a landfill after cremation. The newspaper also stated that another 1,762 remains had been disposed of in the same manner but could not be identified because they were too damaged. The US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta ordered a special review after news of this was released.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
