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Today in History ~ December 12
Events1098 - 1st Crusaders capture and plunder Mara, Syria
1474 - Isabella crowns herself queen of Castilia & Aragon
1533 - Juan Diego said he saw the Virgin Mary on a hill near Mexico City; Our Lady of Guadalupe became the patron saint of all Latin America by 1910.
1719 - The Aurora Borealis was first recorded.
1787 - Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1792 - In Vienna, Ludwig Van Beethoven (22) receives 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn
1800 - Washington DC established as capital of US
1822 - Mexico officially recognized as an independent nation by US
1844 - Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, was the first to use an anesthetic for a dental procedure. [T]
1870 - First African-American Congressional Representative, Joseph Hayne Rainey, sworn in. Rainey a Republican from South Carolina filled the seat made vacant by the expulsion of Representative Benjamin F. Whittemore. Rainey served for 10 years.
1899 - George F Bryant of Boston patents the wooden golf tee
1901 - First Atlantic wireless transmission when Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi sent a signal from an antenna in England to a receiver 2,232 miles away near St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. [H]
1913 - Authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the "Mona Lisa," stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.
1916 - Worst train disaster ever (Modane France-543 French Soldiers killed)
1917 - Father Edward J. Flanagan, a thirty-one-year-old Irish priest, founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb [H]
1925 - Arthur Heinman coins term "motel," opens Motel Inn, San Luis Obispo, CA
1936 - Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek declares war on Japan
1937 - US gunboat Panay is attacked and sunk by Japanese warplanes in Chinese waters, during the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War. Japan later said it was a mistake, apologized, and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)
1941 - German occupying army search house to house in Paris looking for Jews
1941 - United States seizes French liner Normandie [H]
1946 - Tide laundry detergent introduced
1946 - UN accepts 6 Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D Rockefeller Jr
1947 - The United Mine Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of Labor.
1953 - Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane
1955 - 1st prototype of hovercraft patented by Brit eng Christoper Cockerell
1961 - Martin Luther King Jr & 700 demonstraters arrested in Albany Ga
1963 - Frank Sinatra, Jr returned after being kidnapped
1963 - Kenya gained its independence from Britain.
1975 - Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty to a charge of trying to kill President Ford in San Francisco the previous September. Said she willfully tried to kill President Ford. She was sentenced to life in prison.
1976 - QB Joe Namath last game as a NY Jet
1980 - US's copyright law amended to include computer programs
1981 - Martial law was imposed in Poland.
1983 - A truck bomb explodes at US Embassy in Kuwait
1985 - The crash of an Arrow Air DC-8 military charter on takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killed all 256 aboard, including 248 U.S. soldiers.
1986 - Russian Tupolev-134 crashes in East Berlin, 70 killed
1988 - PLO leader Yasir Arafat accepts Israel's right to exist
1989 - Five Central American presidents, including Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, called for an end to the rebel offensive against El Salvador's U.S.-backed government.
1990 - 15 people were killed and more than 260 injured in a pileup on a foggy Tennessee highway.
1991 - North and South Korea concluded an historic agreement to reunify peacefully after 46 years of division and animosity.
1991 - In the nation's most profound change since the 1917, Russian President Boris Yeltsin won landslide approval in the Russian legislature for his new commonwealth, linking the three strongest Soviet republics, while Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev edged closer to resigning, saying, "The main work of my life is done."
1992 - Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, became the first divorced royal in the inner circle to remarry when she wed Cmdr. Timothy Laurence.
1995 - Amendment to make it illegal to physically desecrate the flag turned down by Senate 63-36 (need 2/3 vote)
1996 - A French gunman took 35 hostages in a Paris office. The standoff ended without injuries.
1996 - Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz resigned as Walt Disney Co.'s No. 2 executive.
1997 - Japanese train builders (Maglev) claim world speed record at 332 MPH
1998 - President Clinton began a trip to the Middle East that included a visit to the new Gaza International Airport in Palestinian territory.
2000 - General Motors announced it would phase out its Oldsmobile division over the next few years.
2000 - The Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines.
2000 - A divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election, effectively transforming George W. Bush into the president-elect. (The high court agreed, 7-to-2, to reverse the Florida court's order of a state recount and voted 5-to-4 that there was no acceptable procedure by which a timely new recount could take place.)
Birthdays Today
1685 - Lodovico Giustini, composer
1745 - John Jay (statesman: 1st Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court [1789-1795])
1805 - Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison
1805 - Henry Wells, founder (American Express and Wells Fargo)
1821 - French novelist Gustave Flaubert
1821 - Gustave Flaubert (author: Madame Bovary)
1833 - Matthias Hohner, German manufacturer (harmonica)
1863 - Edvard Munch, Norway, painter/print maker (The Scream)
1875 - Karl R G von Rundstedt, German gen-fieldmarshal (Normandy)
1893 - Edward G. Robinson (Emmanuel Goldberg) (actor: Little Caesar, Key Largo, Double Indemnity, Scarlet Street)
1913 - Winston Burdett (newsman: CBS)
1915 - Francis Albert Sinatra "Chairman of the Board" Hoboken, vocalist/actor
1918 - Joe Williams (jazz singer: with Count Basie; actor: The Bill Cosby Show)
1923 - TV game show host Bob Barker
1924 - Edward I Koch, NYC, (Mayor-D-NYC, 1977-89)/judge (People's Court)
1932 - Bob Pettit (basketball: St. Louis Hawks: MVP Award [1956, 1959])
1936 - Wally Dallenbach (auto racer: Fastest Ontario 100 Indy racer [1973])
1938 - Connie Francis (Franconero) (singer: Stupid Cupid, Where the Boys Are, Lipstick on Your Collar, I'll Follow the Boys)
1940 - Dionne Warwick (Grammy Award-winning singer: Do You Know the Way to San Jose [1968]; Walk on By, I Say a Little Prayer, Promises, Promises, Anyone Who Had a Heart)
1940 - Shirley Englehorn (golf)
1943 - Dickie Betts (musician: guitar: group: The Allman Brothers)
1945 - Ralph Garr (baseball)
1949 - Paul Rodgers (musician: piano, vocals: Cut Loose; groups: Free, Bad Company, The Firm)
1950 - Danny Bouchard (hockey)
1951 - Talk show host Rush Limbaugh
1952 - Cathy Rigby (gymnast, actress, TV commercials)
1952 - Rubin Carter (football: Denver Broncos defensive tackle: Super Bowl XII)
1953 - Rafael Septien (football: Dallas Cowboys kicker: Super Bowl XIII)
1959 - Musician Sheila E
1962 - Former tennis player Tracy Austin
1975 - Actress Mayim Bialik ("Blossom")
Famous deaths
1600 - John Craig, Scottish church reformer/James VI's court vicar, dies
1777 - Rev. Benjamin Russen hanged at Tyburn, England for rape
1889 - Robert Browning, English poet (Ring & Book), dies at 77
1939 - Douglas Fairbanks, actor (Zorro, 3 Musketeers, Robin Hood), dies at 56
1971 - David Sarnoff, US TV pioneer (RCA), dies at 80
2000 - Actor George Montgomery died in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at age 84.
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-mail me
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