1582 Flanders adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days making the next day Jan 1, 1583
1620 The “Mayflower”, and its passengers, pilgrims from England, landed at Plymouth Rock, MA.
1829 1st stone arch railroad bridge in US dedicated, Baltimore
1864 General Sherman conquers Savannah, Georgia
1866 Fetterman Massacre: Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians kill all 81 US Army soldiers in the worst military disaster ever suffered by the U.S. Army on the Great Plains
1906 British Parliament pass two important pieces of social legislation: The Trades Disputes Bill, legalizing peaceful picketing, and The Workingmen’s Compensation Act, broadening employers’ liability for accidents
1909 McKinley and Washington schools of Berkeley, CA, became the first authorized, junior-high schools in the U.S.
1921 Supreme Court rules labor injunctions & picketing unconstitutional
1937 Walt Disney debuted the first, full-length, animated feature in Hollywood, CA. The movie was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
1939 Adolf Hitler names Adolf Eichmann leader of “Referat IV B”, responsible for evictions and Jewish immigration
1970 Oregon v. Mitchell Supreme Court case was decided, lowering the minimum voting age in U.S. federal elections to 18. The voting age for state and local elections was left to states discretion
1970 Elvis Presley meets US President Richard Nixon in the White House – the image of this meeting is the most requested photo from the entire National Archives
1973 Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, US & USSR meet in Geneva to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict
1978 Police in Des Plaines, IL, arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of killing.
1988 Lockerbie disaster: A terrorist bomb destroys Pan Am Flight 103 mid-air, over Scotland; kills all 259 passengers and crew on board, and 11 people on the ground https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pan-am-flight-103-explodes-over-scotland
1989 VP Quayle sends out 30,000 Xmas cards with word beacon spelled beakon
1989 New Zealand is the first country to set a formal inflation target (0-2%) for how much prices should rise each year. Similar targets are subsequently adopted by most developed countries.
1991 Eleven of the 12 former Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
1995 The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
2001 The Islamic militant group Hamas released a statement that said it was suspending suicide bombings and mortar attacks in Israel.
2002 Larry Mayes was released after spending 21 years in prison for a rape that maintained that he never committed. He was the 100th person in the U.S. to be released after DNA tests were performed.
2020 United States attorney general announces charges against Libyan Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, accusing him of involvement in constructing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on the 32nd anniversary of the disaster
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
