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. The theory holds that Mary, mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment she was conceived.
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 American Federation of Labor (AFL) formed by 26 craft unions; Samuel Gompers elected AFL president
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.
1936 NAACP files suit to equalize the salaries of black & white teachers
1940 1st NFL championship on national radio; Bears beat Redskins 73-0
1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers “Day of Infamy” speech to US Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor
1944 The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.
1948 The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.
1949 Communist attacks forced the Chinese Nationalist government to flee to the island of Formosa (Taiwan).
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.
1966 US and USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space
1980 John Lennon, former member of the Beatles, was shot and killed in New York City by a deranged fan.
1982 Demanding an end to nuclear weapons, Norman Mayer, holds the Washington Monument hostage – After 10 hours, police kill him; he has no explosives
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 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 Americans got to see live television coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. (Due to the time difference, it was December 9 in Somalia.)
1993 President Bill Clinton signed The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into law.
1998 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police could not search a person or their cars after ticketing for a routine traffic violation.
1999 In Memphis, TN, a jury found that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been the victim of a vast murder conspiracy, not a lone assassin
2010 The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus.
2010 SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
