November 24

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.

There are 37 days remaining in 2016.

There are 30 days until Christmas. So, get busy.:santa:

Events

1248 – In the middle of the night a mass on the north side of Mont Granier suddenly collapsed, in one of the largest historical rockslope failures known in Europe, creating the sheer 700 m north face of the mountain.

1429 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.

1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain: Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

1877 – Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published.

1917 – In Milwaukee, Wisconsin nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001.

1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

1963 – In the first live, televised murder, Lee Harvey Oswald, the [presumed] assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered two days after the assassination, by Jack Ruby, a nightclub operator, in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. Oswald was being led by two detectives to an armoured car to take him to the nearby county jail.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasts only four months.

1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

1976 – The Çaldıran–Muradiye earthquake in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people.

2015 – A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet is shot down by Turkish Air Force F-16s over the Syria–Turkey border, killing one of the two pilots; a Russian marine is also killed during a subsequent rescue effort.

Births

1690 – Charles Theodore Pachelbel:keys:; 1713 – Junípero Serra; 1784 – Zachary Taylor (12th POTUS); 1806 – William Webb Ellis (created rugby); 1864 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:artist:; 1867 – Scott Joplin♪ ♫; 1877 – Alben W. Barkley (35th VPOTUS); 1888 – Dale Carnegie (author How to Win Friends and Influence People); 1897 – Lucky Luciano (mob boss); 1913 – Howard Duff; 1913 – Geraldine Fitzgerald; 1925 – William F. Buckley, Jr.; 1938 – Charles Starkweather; 1940 – Paul Tagliabue; 1941 – Pete Best:drummer:; 1941 – Donald "Duck" Dunn:bass:(Booker T. & the M.G.'s); 1942 – Billy Connolly:devil:; 1942 – Marlin Fitzwater; 1945 – Lee Michaels♪ ♫; 1946 – Ted Bundy; 1947 – Dwight Schultz ('Howlin' Mad Murdock' on The A-Team); 1950 – Bob Burns:drummer:(Lynyrd Skynyrd); 1956 – Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Castle); 1957 – Denise Crosby ('Tasha Yar' on Star Trek: TNG); 1962 – John Squire:shred:(The Stone Roses); 1964 – Brad Sherwood (Whose Line Is It Anyway? (American and British)); 1969 – Rob Nicholson:bass:(Rob Zombie); 1977 – Colin Hanks (Life In Pieces, Tom Hanks' son); 1978 – Katherine Heigl:love:

Deaths

1916 – Hiram Maxim (invented the Maxim machine gun); 1957 – Diego Rivera:artist:; 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald (presumed assassin of JFK); 1980 – George Raft; 1982 – Barack Obama, Sr. (if only he'd worn a condom:facepalm:); 1991 – Freddie Mercury♪ ♫(Queen); 1991 – Eric Carr:drummer:(KISS); 1993 – Albert Collins:shred:; 2005 – Pat Morita ("Wax on, wax off."); 2012 – Héctor 'Macho' Camacho:boxers:

All-time winner of the best name for a war contest.

Agreed.:D

Concur

Disagree, war by any other name is just as bad. :(

Well, if there's gonna be a war anyway, it may as well have a cool name.

November 25

Not a lot of ado about Movember this year, was there?

Today is an International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This day marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.

New York, New York marks this day as Evacuation Day, commemorating the day in 1783 when British troops departed Manhattan Island after the end of the American Revolution.


There are 36 days remaining in 2016.

There are 29 days until Christmas.

Events

885 – Siege of Paris: Viking forces sail the Seine River with a fleet of 300 longships and lay siege to Paris.

1120 – The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son and heir of Henry I of England.

1343 – A tsunami, caused by an earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastates Naples and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places.

1487 – Elizabeth of York is crowned Queen of England.

1667 – A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.

1759 – An earthquake hits the Mediterranean destroying Beirut and Damascus and killing 30,000-40,000.

1833 – A massive undersea earthquake, estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2, rocks Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coast.

1839 – A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40-foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster.

1876 – American Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.

1940 – World War II: First flight of the de Havilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.

1950 – The Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950 impacts 22 American states, killing 353 people, injuring over 160, and causing US$66.7 million in damages (1950 dollars, $$661,468,220 in 2016 dollars).

1952 – Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It will become the longest continuously-running play in history.

1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated.

1961 - The Everly Brothers started active service for the 8th Battalion Marine Corps Reserves, working as artillerymen.


1968 - The Beatles (known as The White Album), was released in the US.

1972 - Chuck Berry was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'My Ding a-Ling', his only UK No.1.

1976 - The Band made their final performance; 'The Last Waltz' held on American Thanksgiving Day, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The event was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and made into a documentary of the same name, released in 1978.

1984 – Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1992 - The Bodyguard opened nation-wide featuring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. The film which was Houston's acting debut was written by Lawrence Kasdan in the 1970s, originally as a vehicle for Steve McQueen [Wikipedia says Ryan O'Neal] and Diana Ross. It became the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 1992 with the soundtrack becoming the best-selling soundtrack of all time, selling more than 42 million copies worldwide.

1999 – A 5-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast.

1999 – The United Nations establishes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

2000 – The 2000 Baku earthquake, with a Richter magnitude of 7.0, leaves 26 people dead in Baku, Azerbaijan, and becomes the strongest earthquake in the region in 158 years.

2003 - Glen Campbell was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona with a blood alcohol level of .20 after his BMW struck a Toyota Camry. He was charged with 'extreme' drunk driving, hit and run, and assaulting a police officer. A police officer reported that while in custody, Campbell hummed his hit 'Rhinestone Cowboy' repeatedly.

Births

1835 – Andrew Carnegie; 1844 – Karl Benz (yeah, that one); 1846 – Carrie Nation; 1914 – Joltin' Joe DiMaggio; 1915 – Augusto Pinochet; 1920 – Ricardo Montalbán (Fantasy Island, The Wrath Of Khan); 1926 – Jeffrey Hunter; 1940 – Percy Sledge♪ ♫; 1943 – Jerry Portnoy♪ ♫; 1944 – Ben Stein ("Bueller?"); 1947 – John Larroquette (Night Court); 1953 – Jeffrey Skilling (former Enron CEO); 1960 – Amy Grant♪ ♫; 1960 – John F. Kennedy Jr.; 1965 – Tim Armstrong♪ ♫(Rancid); 1965 – Dougray Scott; 1968 – Jill:love: & Jacqueline Hennessy (OMG Jill Hennesey has an identical twin:heartpump:eek:); 1971 – Christina Applegate:love:; 1986 – Katie Cassidy

Deaths

1560 – Andrea Doria (the person, not the boat); 1748 – Isaac Watts♪ ♫; 1885 – Thomas A. Hendricks (21st VPOTUS); 1944 – Kenesaw Mountain Landis; 1949 – Bill Robinson (danced w/Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel); 1965 – Myra Hess:keys:; 1968 – Upton Sinclair (author of The Jungle); 1973 – Laurence Harvey (played William Travis in The Alamo); 1981 – Jack Albertson; 1998 – Flip Wilson

November 26

Anti Obesity Day is observed internationally on this date.

There are 35 days remaining in 2016.

There are 28 days until Christmas.


Events

1476 – Vlad the Impaler defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.

1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President George Washington at the request of Congress.

1825 – At Union College in Schenectady, New York, a group of college students form the Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.

1863 – United States President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. (Since 1941, it has been on the fourth Thursday.)

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (King Tut) in over 3000 years.

1922 – The Toll of the Sea debuts as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor. (The Gulf Between was the first film to do so, but it was not widely distributed.)

1942 – Casablanca, the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.

1944 – World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's shop in London, killing 168 people.

1950 – Korean War: Troops from the People's Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces (Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River and Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.

1958 - Johnny Cash made his debut on the US country chart when ‘Cry! Cry! Cry!’ made it to number 14.

1968 – Vietnam War: United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire. He is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

1968 - Cream played their farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

1970 – In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in 1 minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.

1983 – Brink's-Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars, diamonds, and cash worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brink's-Mat vault at Heathrow Airport.

1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the members of what will become known as the Tower Commission.

1988 - Russian cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 7 took into space a cassette copy (minus the cassette box for weight reasons) of the latest Pink Floyd album Delicate Sound Of Thunder and played it in orbit, making Pink Floyd the first rock band to be played in space.

1994 - The Eagles started a two-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Hell Freezes Over.'

2000 - The Beatles went to No.1 on the US album chart with 'Beatles 1.' The album features virtually every number-one single released from 1962 to 1970. The world's best-selling album of the 21st century, 1 has sold over 31 million copies.

2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida's electoral votes by Katherine Harris, going on to win the United States presidential election, despite losing in the national popular vote.

2003 – The Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.

2004 – The last Poʻouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii, before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.

2010 - Willie Nelson was arrested for possession of six ounces of marijuana found in his tour bus while travelling from Los Angeles to Texas. He was released after paying bail of $2,500. Prosecutor Kit Bramblett supported not sentencing Nelson to jail due to the amount of marijuana being small, but suggested instead a $100 fine and told Nelson that he would have him sing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" for the court.

2011 – The Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover.

Births

1607 – John Harvard (yeah, that Harvard); 1853 – Bat Masterson (He wore a cane and derby hat, They called him Bat, Bat Masterson); 1876 – Willis Carrier (invented air conditioning); 1888 – Ford Beebe; 1895 – Bill W. (co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous); 1899 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann (may or may not have kidnapped and murdered Charles Lindbergh's son); 1902 – Maurice McDonald (co-founded McDonald's); 1912 – Eric Sevareid; 1922 – Charles M. Schulz (created Peanuts); 1933 – Robert Goulet♪ ♫; 1938 – Rich Little; 1939 – Wayland Flowers (put his hand up Madame's dress); 1939 – Tina Turner♪ ♫; 1945 – Daniel Davis (played 'Prof. Moriarty' on Star Trek: TNG); 1945 – John McVie:bass:(Fleetwood Mac); 1956 – Dale Jarrett:driving:

Deaths

1883 – Sojourner Truth; 1926 – John Browning (weapon designer); 1943 – Edward 'Butch' O'Hare (namesake of the USS O'Hare, and O'Hare Int'l Airport in Chicago); 1956 – Tommy Dorsey♪ ♫; 1978 – Ford Beebe; 2005 – Stan Berenstain (co-created the Berenstain Bears); 2013 – Tony Musante; 2016 – Fidel Castro (Cuban revolutionary, leader of Cuba 1959 - 2008)

November 27

There are 34 days remaining in 2015.

There are 27 days until Christmas.


Events

602 – Emperor Maurice is forced to watch his five sons be executed before being beheaded himself.

1703 – The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.

1810 – The Berners Street hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in the City of Westminster, London.

1835 – James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England.

1895 – At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.

1896 – Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss is first performed.

1901 – The U.S. Army War College is established.

1924 – In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.

1942 – World War II: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.

1944 – World War II: RAF Fauld explosion: An explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump in Staffordshire kills 70 people, and 200 cattle. The explosion left a crater 300 yards long, 233 yards wide, and 100 feet deep, covering 12 acres.

1965 – Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.

1968 – Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball, for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars.

1973 – Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. (On December 6, the House will confirm him 387–35). [Gerald Ford holds the distinction of being the only person to hold the office of Vice-President and, later, President, without being elected to either office.]

1975 – The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter had announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.

1978 – In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.

1992 – For the second time in a year, military forces try to overthrow president Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela.

1997 - A disturbed rock fan brought the funeral of INXS singer Michael Hutchence to a standstill when he tried to launch himself from a 20 ft high balcony with a cord around his neck. He was removed by police and taken away to a psychiatric unit.:crazy:

2005 - Multimillionaire defense contractor David H. Brooks booked New York’s Rainbow Rooms and his daughter Elizabeth’s favorite acts for her ‘bat mitzvah’ coming-of-age celebration. The stars who appeared included 50 Cent, Tom Petty, Aerosmith, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Stevie Nicks. 50 Cent who was paid $500,000 to appear performed only four songs but he did manage to work in the lyric, "Go shorty, it's your bat miztvah, we gonna party like it's your bat mitzvah". The party cost an estimated $10 million, including the price of corporate jets to ferry the performers to and from the venue.

2015 – An active shooter inside a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, shoots at least four members of the Colorado Springs Police Department. One officer later dies. Two civilians were also killed, and six injured. The shooter later surrendered.

Births

1701 – Anders Celsius (yeah, that Celsius); 1897 – Vito Genovese (mob boss "Boss of All Bosses"); 1909 – James Agee; 1916 – Chick Hearn; 1917 – Buffalo Bob Smith (Howdy Doody Show); 1918 – Stephen Elliott; 1921 – Alexander Dubček; 1932 – Benigno Aquino, Jr.; 1934 – Al Jackson, Jr.:drummer:(Booker T. & The M.G.'s); 1940 – Bruce Lee; 1941 – Eddie Rabbitt♪ ♫; 1942 – Jimi Hendrix:shred:; 1944 – Mickey Leland; 1945 – James Avery (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air); 1953 – Curtis Armstrong ('Booger' in Revenge of the Nerds); 1955 – Bill Nye The Science Guy; 1956 – William Fichtner (Invasion); 1957 – Caroline Kennedy; 1957 – Michael A. Stackpole; 1960 – Tim Pawlenty; 1961 – Samantha Bond (played 'Moneypenny' during the Peirce Brosnan James Bond films); 1961 – Steve Oedekerk; 1962 – Charlie Benante:drummer:(Anthrax); 1962 – Mike Bordin:drummer:(Faith No More, Ozzy); 1963 – Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit); 1964 – Robin Givens; 1968 – Michael Vartan (Alias); 1971 – Kirk Acevedo (Oz); 1976 – Jaleel White ('Urkel' on Family Matters); 1985 – Alison Pill:love:

Deaths

8 BC – Horace ("A clumsier child you'll never see than Horace; I bet he broke 40 cup."); 602 – Maurice (he spoke of the pompitous of love); 1901 – Clement Studebaker (yeah, that one); 1934 – Baby Face Nelson ("My name is GEOOOOOORGE NELSON!" [his name was actually Lester]); 1953 – Eugene O'Neill; 1975 – Ross McWhirter; 1978 – Harvey Milk; 1978 – George Moscone; 1988 – John Carradine ('Cassius Starbuckle' in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); 1990 – David White (Bewitched); 2005 – Jocelyn Brando (The Big Heat); 2007 – Robert Cade (co-invented Gatorade); 2011 – Ken Russell; 2013 – Lewis Collins (The Professionals)

Damn. That's harsh.

Wealthy powerful people have different things to worry about. Kidnapping. Assassination. Etc.

All things considered, though, beheading's probably not a bad way to go. Much less painful than what they often did to people they were kicking out of power.

I guess it would depend on what you are being beheaded with...a big ol' "Hassan chop!!"-style scimitar, or, a chunk of stove wood.

I've long thought that the word 'beheading' is an odd duck. If you bedazzle something with your Bedazzler, you're adding dazzle, if you bedeck your halls at Christmastime, you're adding boughs of holly.

A little different w/beheading.:right:

The beheading doesn't bother me so much, it's being forced to watch your children killed first.

November 28

Today is the 333rd day of the year, there are 33 days remaining in 2016.

There are 26 days until Christmas.


Events

1443 – Having deserted the army of the Ottoman Empire, Skanderbeg went to Krujë in Middle Albania and using a forged letter from Sultan Murad II to the Governor of Krujë, became lord of the city.

1520 – An expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan passes through the Strait of Magellan.

1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license.

1811 – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

1895 – The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.:3_eyes:

1905 – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.

1909 – Sergei Rachmaninoff makes the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3, considered to be one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical repertoire.

1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people.

1943 – World War II: Tehran Conference: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.

1967 – The first pulsar, known as PSR B1919+21, was discovered in the constellation of Vulpecula by two astronomers, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and Antony Hewish.

1970 - Dave Edmunds was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with his version of the 1955 Smiley Lewis hit 'I Hear You Knocking.'.

1971 – Fred Quilt, a leader of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation suffers severe abdominal injuries allegedly caused by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers; he dies two days later.

1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison.

1979 – Air New Zealand Flight 901, a DC-10 sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashes into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

1980 – Iran–Iraq War: Operation Morvarid: The bulk of the Iraqi Navy is destroyed by the Iranian Navy in the Persian Gulf. (Commemorated in Iran as Navy Day.)

Births

1757 – William Blake:artist:; 1792 – Victor Cousin (invented the cousin); 1866 – Henry Bacon (designed the Lincoln Memorial); 1887 – Ernst Röhm; 1923 – Gloria Grahame; 1927 – Chuck Mitchell ('Porky' in Porky's, & Porky's Revenge); 1929 – Berry Gordy, Jr.♪ ♫; 1933 – Hope Lange (Peyton Place, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir); 1936 – Gary Hart; 1940 – Bruce Channel♪ ♫(wrote/sang "Hey Baby!"); 1943 – Randy Newman:keys:; 1949 – Alexander Godunov (Die Hard); 1949 – Paul Shaffer:keys::cool:(CBS Orchestra); 1950 – Ed Harris; 1952 – S. Epatha Merkerson; 1959 – Judd Nelson; 1961 – Martin Clunes (Doc Martin); 1962 – Matt Cameron:drummer:(Soundgarden, Pearl Jam); 1962 – Jon Stewart; 1967 – Anna Nicole Smith:ggw:; 1987 – Karen Gillan (Dr. Who); 1995 – Chase Elliott:driving:(NASCAR driver, son of "Awesome Bill From Dawsonville" Bill Elliott)

Deaths

1859 – Washington Irving ("Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"); 1872 – Mary Somerville; 1939 – James Naismith (created basketball); 1953 – Frank Olson(<--Interesting read.); 1954 – Enrico Fermi; 1968 – Enid Blyton; 1972 - Claude Buffet:behead:; 1972 - Roger Bontems:behead:; 1976 – Rosalind Russell (Auntie Mame, His Girl Friday); 1983 – Christopher George (The Rat Patrol); 1993 – Jerry Edmonton:drummer:(Steppenwolf); 1993 – Garry Moore; 1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer; 1994 – Buster Edwards (helped commit The Great Train Robbery of 1963); 1994 – Jerry Rubin; 2001 – Kal Mann♪ ♫(wrote the lyrics to "Teddy Bear", "Butterfly", and "Let's Twist Again"); 2005 – Marc Lawrence; 2010 – Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!, Naked Gun); 2012 – Zig Ziglar; 2015 – Marjorie Lord (Make Room For Daddy)

If it helps, he was 63 and his sons were all well into adulthood. Wiki says they spared his wife and daughters.

Maybe he didn't like them much anyway.:yelsick:

November 29

There are 32 days remaining in 2016.

There are 25 days until Christmas.


Events

800 – Charlemagne arrives at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III.

1729 – Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.

1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance.

1847 – Whitman massacre: Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War.

1864 – American Indian Wars: Sand Creek massacre: Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants [mostly women & children] inside Colorado Territory.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Spring Hill: A Confederate advance into Tennessee misses an opportunity to crush the Union Army. General John Bell Hood is angered, which leads to the Battle of Franklin.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard E. Byrd leads the first expedition to fly over the South Pole.

1944 – The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome is performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission: Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

1967 – Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation.

1972 – Atari announces the release of Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

1996 - American singer and ukulele player Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury) died from a heart attack on stage while playing his hit ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ at a club in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2001 - Beatles guitarist George Harrison died in Los Angeles of lung cancer aged 58.

2009 – Maurice Clemmons shoots and kills four police officers inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington.

Births

1803 – Christian Doppler (described the Doppler Effect); 1831 – Frederick Townsend Ward; 1832 – Louisa May Alcott; 1876 – Nellie Tayloe Ross; 1895 – Busby Berkeley; 1895 – Yakima Canutt; 1898 – C. S. Lewis; 1908 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.; 1917 – Merle Travis:shred:; 1919 – Joe Weider; 1920 – Joseph Shivers (developed Spandex); 1927 – Vin Scully; 1933 – John Mayall♪ ♫(John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers); 1935 – Diane Ladd; 1940 – Denny Doherty♪ ♫(The Mamas & The Papas); 1940 – Chuck Mangione♪ ♫; 1942 – Felix Cavaliere:keys:; 1946 – Suzy Chaffee (Suzy Chapstick in the Chapstick commercials); 1947 – Ronnie Montrose:shred:(Montrose); 1949 – Jerry 'The King' Lawler; 1949 – Dutch Mantel; 1949 – Garry Shandling; 1951 – Barry Goudreau:shred:(Boston); 1952 – Jeff Fahey (The Lawnmower Man); 1954 – Joel Coen; 1955 – Howie Mandel; 1957 – Janet Napolitano; 1960 – Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull); 1961 – Kim Delaney; 1961 – Tom Sizemore; 1962 – Andy LaRocque:shred:(King Diamond); 1962 – Andrew McCarthy; 1964 – Don Cheadle; 1968 – Jonathan Knight♪ ♫(New Kids On The Block); 1970 – Larry Joe Campbell (According To Jim); 1972 – Brian Baumgartner (The Office); 1976 – Anna Faris; 1982 – Lucas Black (Slingblade, NCIS: New Orleans); 1982 – Ashley Force:love::driving:; 1988 – Russell Wilson

Deaths

1974 – James J. Braddock:boxers:; 1981 – Natalie Wood; 1986 – Cary Grant; 1991 – Ralph Bellamy; 1999 – Gene Rayburn; 2001 – George Harrison:shred:(The Beatles, The Traveling Wilburys); 2004 – John Drew Barrymore; 2005 – Wendie Jo Sperber

November 30

Today is observed as Cities For Life Day worldwide, supporting the abolition of the death penalty.

Today is the last day of November.

There are 31 days remaining in 2016.

There are 24 days until Christmas.


Events

1707 – The second Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida.

1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris: In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

1786 – The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, under Pietro Leopoldo I, becomes the first modern state to abolish the death penalty (later commemorated as Cities for Life Day).

1803 – In New Orleans, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1864 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army of Tennessee suffers heavy losses in an attack on the Union Army of the Ohio in the Battle of Franklin. [I went to the reenactment on the anniversary of the Battle Of Franklin. 25,000 reenactors, breastworks, fortifications, huge encampment of reenactors. It was freaking awesome. At the time, it was the second-largest reenactment, second only to Gettysburg.]

1886 – The Folies Bergère stages its first revue.

1934 – The LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman becomes the first steam locomotive to be authenticated as reaching 100 mph.

1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.

1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; this is the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.

1968 - Glen Campbell started a five-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Wichita Lineman.' Jimmy Webb's inspiration for the lyrics came while driving through Washita County in northern Oklahoma. Webb was driving through an endless litany of telephone poles, each looking exactly the same as the last. Then, in the distance, he noticed the silhouette of a solitary lineman atop a pole. Webb then "put himself atop that pole and put that phone in his hand" as he considered what the lineman was saying into the receiver.

1982 – Michael Jackson's second solo album, Thriller is released worldwide. It will become the best-selling record album in history.

1994 - Tupac Shakur was shot five times during a robbery outside a New York City recording studio.

1994 – MS Achille Lauro catches fire off the coast of Somalia.

1995 – Official end of Operation Desert Storm.

1998 – Exxon and Mobil sign a US$73.7 billion agreement to merge, thus creating ExxonMobil, the world's largest company.

1999 – In Seattle, United States, demonstrations against a World Trade Organization meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.

1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.

Births

1466 – Andrea Doria (the person, not the ship); 1667 – Jonathan Swift; 1781 – Alexander Berry; 1810 – Oliver Winchester (founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company); 1835 – Mark Twain; 1836 – Lord Frederick Cavendish; 1872 – John McCrae (wrote the poem In Flanders Fields); 1874 – Winston The British Bulldog Churchill; 1909 – Robert Nighthawk; 1912 – Gordon Parks; 1915 – Brownie McGhee:shred:; 1918 – Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.; 1924 – Shirley Chisholm; 1924 – Allan Sherman♪ ♫; 1925 – William H. Gates, Sr. (Bill Gates father); 1926 – Richard Crenna; 1927 – Robert Guillaume; 1928 – Joe B. Hall (head basketball coach at University of Kentucky for 13 years, the man is royalty here); 1929 – Dick Clark♪ ♫; 1929 – Joan Ganz Cooney (co-created Sesame Street); 1930 – G. Gordon Liddy; 1932 – Bob Moore:bass: (member of The Nashville A Team); 1936 – Abbie Hoffman; 1937 – Jimmy Bowen♪ ♫; 1937 – Luther Ingram♪ ♫; 1937 – Ridley Scott; 1937 – Tom Simpson (died in 67 Tour de France cycling up Mont Ventoux); 1943 – Terrence Malick; 1945 – Roger Glover:bass:(Deep Purple, Rainbow); 1947 – David Mamet; 1952 – Mandy Patinkin; 1953 – Shuggie Otis (wrote Strawberry Letter 23); 1953 – June Pointer♪ ♫(youngest Pointer Sister); 1953 – David Sancious:keys:(E Street Band); 1955 – Billy Idol♪ ♫; 1957 – John Ashton♪ ♫(The Psychedelic Furs); 1957 – Colin Mochrie; 1958 – Stacey Q♪ ♫; 1962 – Bo Jackson; 1965 – Ben Stiller; 1973 – John Moyer:bass:(Disturbed, Operation: Mindcrime (a band, not the Queensryche album)); 1975 – Mindy McCready♪ ♫; 1978 – Clay Aiken♪ ♫; 1982 – Elisha Cuthbert; 1985 – Kaley Cuoco:love:(8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, The Big Bang Theory)

Deaths

1873 – Alexander Berry; 1900 – Oscar Wilde; 1979 – Zeppo Marx; 1994 – Lionel Stander ('Max', the Man Friday to the Harts on Hart To Hart); 1996 – Tiny Tim; 2000 – Scott Smith:bass:(Loverboy); 2007 – Evel Knievel:devil:; 2013 – Paul Walker

I seem to remember it hit her on the thigh.

:yesnod:

Attachment 58683

December 1

Today is observed as a Day Without Art, an annual event to raise AIDS awareness. Coincides with World AIDS Day.

There are 30 days remaining in 2016.

There are 23 days until Christmas.


Events

1824 – United States presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1862 – In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.

1865 – Shaw University, the first historically black university in the southern United States, is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina.

1913 – Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.

1941 – World War II: Emperor Hirohito of Japan gives the final approval to initiate war against the United States.

1941 – World War II: Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signs Administrative Order 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.

1952 – The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery.

1955 – American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1958 – The Our Lady of the Angels School fire in Chicago kills 92 children and three nuns.

1959 – Cold War: Opening date for signature of the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent.

1960 – Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested (and later deported) from Hamburg, Germany, after accusations of attempted arson.

1969 – Vietnam War: The first draft lottery since World War II is held in the United States.

1984 – NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, wherein an airliner is deliberately crashed in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes.

1990 – Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 metres beneath the seabed.

Births

1761 – Marie Tussaud (founded Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum); 1886 – Rex Stout (author of Nero Wolfe detective novels); 1913 – Mary Martin (Peter Pan, South Pacific, Larry Hagman's mother); 1923 – Dick Shawn; 1929 – David Doyle (Charlie's Angels); 1933 – Lou Rawls♪ ♫; 1934 – Billy Paul♪ ♫; 1935 – Woody Allen; 1939 – Lee Trevino; 1940 – Richard Pryor:lol2:; 1944 – Eric Bloom:shred:(Blue Oyster Cult); 1944 – John Densmore:drummer:(The Doors); 1944 – Michael Hagee; 1945 – Bette Midler♪ ♫; 1946 – Jonathan Katz; 1946 – Gilbert O'Sullivan♪ ♫; 1947 – Elizabeth Baur (Ironside); 1951 – Obba Babatundé; 1951 – Jaco Pastorius:bass:; 1951 – Treat Williams; 1957 – Chris Poland♪ ♫(Megadeth); 1957 – Vesta Williams♪ ♫; 1960 – Carol Alt; 1961 – Jeremy Northam; 1967 – Nestor Carbonell (Lost, Suddenly Susan); 1970 – Jonathan Coulton♪ ♫:devil:; 1970 – Sarah Silverman; 1975 – Isaiah "Ikey" Owens:keys:(The Mars Volta); 1977 – Brad Delson♪ ♫(Linkin Park); 1985 – Chanel Preston (porn actress)

Deaths

1866 – George Everest (namesake of Mt. Everest); 1935 – Bernhard Schmidt (invented the Schmidt camera); 1947 – Aleister Crowley; 1954 – Fred Rose♪ ♫; 1973 – David Ben-Gurion (namesake of Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport); 2008 – Paul Benedict (neighbor 'Bentley' on The Jeffersons, The Number Painter on Sesame Street)

December 2

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is observed each year on this day.

There are 29 days remaining in 2016.

There are 22 days until Christmas.


Events

1775 – The USS Alfred becomes the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag (the precursor to the Stars and Stripes); the flag is hoisted by John Paul Jones, bass player with Led Zeppelin.

1823 – Monroe Doctrine: In a State of the Union message, U.S. President James Monroe proclaims American neutrality in future European conflicts, and warns European powers not to interfere in the Americas.

1845 – Manifest destiny: In a State of the Union message, U.S. President James K. Polk proposes that the United States should aggressively expand into the West.

1859 – Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16 raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

1927 – Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile.

1930 – Great Depression: In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Herbert Hoover proposes a $150 million (equivalent to $2,128,000,000 in 2015) public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.

1939 – New York City's LaGuardia Airport opens.

1942 – World War II: During the Manhattan Project, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

1943 – World War II: A Luftwaffe bombing raid on the harbour of Bari, Italy, sinks numerous cargo and transport ships, including the American SS John Harvey, which is carrying a stockpile of World War I-era mustard gas.

1954 – Cold War: The United States Senate votes 65 to 22 to censure Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute".

1956 – The Granma reaches the shores of Cuba's Oriente Province. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement disembark to initiate the Cuban Revolution.

1970 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.

1976 – Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado.

1982 – At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart.

1993 – Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is shot and killed in Medellín.

1993 – Space Shuttle program: STS-61: NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

2001 – American energy company Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

2015 – San Bernardino attack: Terrorists kill 14 people and wound 22 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.

Births

1754 – William Cooper (founded Cooperstown, New York); 1863 – Charles Edward Ringling (co-founded the Ringling Brothers Circus); 1923 – Maria Callas♪ ♫; 1924 – Jonathan Frid ('Barnabas' on Dark Shadows); 1924 – Alexander Haig ("I am in control here."); 1931 – Edwin Meese; 1939 – Harry Reid; 1945 – Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years); 1946 – Gianni Versace; 1954 – Dan Butler ('Bulldog' on Frasier); 1956 – Steven Bauer (Scarface, Breaking Bad); 1960 – Rick Savage:bass:(Def Leppard); 1968 – Lucy Liu (Elementary, Ally MacBeal); 1978 – Nelly Furtado♪ ♫; 1981 – Britney Spears♪ ♫:love:; 1983 – Aaron Rodgers

Deaths

1547 – Hernán Cortés; 1814 – Marquis de Sade:whip:; 1859 – John Brown; 1936 – John Ringling (co-founded Ringling Brothers Circus); 1957 – Harrison Ford; 1982 – Marty Feldman:eyeball::eyeball:; 1986 – Desi Arnaz♪ ♫; 1990 – Aaron Copland♪ ♫; 1995 – Roxie Roker (upstairs neighbor 'Helen' on The Jeffersons, Lenny Kravitz's mother); 2000 – Gail Fisher (secretary 'Peggy Fair' on Mannix); 2008 – Odetta♪ ♫<---:jig:

Um, did you fact check that? :eyebrow:

The flag-hoisting bit is a fact. The bass player may have been some other guy.;)

The world carries on, and, so must we all.:sniff:

December 3

1818 – Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.

1901 – In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".

1904 – The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.

1910 – Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.

1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.

1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released.

1964 – Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property. [Guess they should have banned banned protest protests, huh?]

1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).

1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

1976 – An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, and plays a concert two days later.

1979 – In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert.

1982 – A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.

1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

1992 – A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world's first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague. [The message said "Merry Christmas".]

1994 – The PlayStation was released in Japan.

1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

2005 – XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.

2014 – The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa 2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to an asteroid (162173 Ryugu) to collect rock samples.

Births

1826 – George B. McClellan; 1842 – Charles Alfred Pillsbury (yeah, that one); 1925 – Ferlin Husky♪ ♫; 1927 – Andy Williams♪ ♫; 1934 – Nicolas Coster; 1937 – Bobby Allison:driving::devil:; 1948 – Ozzy Osbourne♪ ♫:devil:; 1949 – Mickey Thomas♪ ♫(Jefferson Starship, Starship); 1951 – Rick Mears:driving:; 1952 – Benny Hinn; 1960 – Daryl Hannah (Splash, Clan of the Cave Bear); 1960 – Julianne Moore; 1963 – Terri Schiavo; 1965 – Katarina Witt; 1968 – Brendan Fraser; 1968 – Montell Jordan♪ ♫; 1980 – Anna Chlumsky

Deaths

311 – Diocletian; 1552 – Francis Xavier; 1888 – Carl Zeiss (yeah, the lens guy); 1894 – Robert Louis Stevenson; 1910 – Mary Baker Eddy; 1919 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir:artist:; 1981 – Walter Knott (founded Knott's Berry Farm); 1989 – Connie B. Gay♪ ♫(founded the Country Music Association); 1999 – Madeline Kahn:love::devil:; 2014 – Ian McLagan:keys:(Small Faces, Faces); 2015 – Scott Weiland♪ ♫(Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver)

December 4

771 – Austrasian king Carloman I dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne king of the now complete Frankish Kingdom.

1619 – Thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. The group's charter proclaims that the day "be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."

1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek. (The mission would later grow into the city of Chicago.)

1783 – At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, U.S. General George Washington bids farewell to his officers.

1791 – The first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, is published.

1872 – The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for nine days but was only slightly damaged.

1875 – Notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison; he is later recaptured in Spain.

1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published.

1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.

1954 – The first Burger King is opened in Miami. [Thank you God.]

1956 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio for the first and last time.

1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco's first female mayor.

1988 – Roy Orbison plays his last set at The Front Row Theater in Highland Heights, Ohio. Orbison dies two later of a heart attack, aged 52.

1991 – Terry A. Anderson is released after seven years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut; he is the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.

1992 – Somali Civil War: President George H. W. Bush orders 28,000 U.S. troops to Somalia in Northeast Africa.

1998 – The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched.

2006 – Six black youths assault a white teenager in Jena, Louisiana.

Births

34 – Persius; 1892 – Francisco Franco; 1921 – Deanna Durbin; 1923 – Charles Keating; 1930 – Ronnie Corbett (one of The Two Ronnies); 1933 – Wink Martindale;); 1933 – Horst Buchholz (The Magnificent Seven); 1934 – Victor French (Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven and Carter Country); 1937 – Max Baer, Jr. ('Jethro' on The Beverly Hillbillies); 1939 – Freddy Cannon♪ ♫; 1942 – Bob Mosley:bass:(Moby Grape); 1944 – Chris Hillman♪ ♫(The Byrds); 1944 – Dennis Wilson:drummer:(The Beach Boys); 1947 – Terry Woods♪ ♫(The Pogues); 1948 – Southside Johnny♪ ♫(Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes); 1949 – Jeff Bridges; 1951 – Gary Rossington:shred:(Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rossington-Collins Band); 1964 – Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny); 1966 – Fred Armisen (SNL); 1966 – Andy Hess:bass:(Gov't Mule, The Black Crowes); 1969 – Jay Z♪ ♫; 1971 – Shannon Briggs:boxers:; 1973 – Tyra Banks

Deaths

1131 – Omar Khayyám; 1902 – Charles Dow (co-founded Dow Jones & Company); 1945 – Thomas Hunt Morgan; 1967 – Bert Lahr (the 'cowardly lion' in The Wizard of Oz); 1976 – Tommy Bolin:shred:(James Gang, Deep Purple); 1993 – Frank Zappa♪ ♫(The Mothers Of Invention); 2015 – Robert Loggia (Big, Independence Day, Scarface)

Jumping down the Wikipedia rabbit hole on this one, I discovered that when humans landed a probe on that comet with the Rosetta spacecraft a couple years ago, the sensors picked up this methyl isocyanate organic compound.

December 5

Today is World Soil Day, as declared by the United Nations. So, idk, have some dirt.:o

There are 26 days remaining in 2016.

There are 19 days until Christmas.


Events

1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

1766 – In London, James Christie holds his first sale.

1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1831 – Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.

1847 – Jefferson Davis is elected to the U.S. Senate.

1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

1876 – The Brooklyn Theatre fire kills at least 278 people in Brooklyn, New York.

1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.

1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. [And there was much rejoicing. I mean, like, a lot of rejoicing.:guinness::beer::drunk:]

1952 – Great Smog: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.

1955 – E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

1958 – The Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.)

1960 - Paul McCartney and Pete Best were arrested for pinning a condom to a brick wall and then igniting it. The two were told to leave Germany and The Beatles returned home, discouraged.

1964 - Lorne Greene star of the NBC TV show 'Bonanza' was at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Ringo', making him the second Canadian (after Paul Anka) to have a US No.1 single.

2004 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there.

Births

1782 – Martin Van Buren (8th POTUS); 1839 – George Armstrong Custer; 1859 – John Jellicoe; 1871 – Bill Pickett (<--Interesting read. He invented 'bulldogging', which evolved into the rodeo event of the same name.); 1879 – Clyde Vernon Cessna (yeah, that Cessna); 1890 – Fritz Lang; 1901 – Walt Disney; 1901 – Werner Heisenberg (German scientist, namesake of 'Walter White's' alias in Breaking Bad:devil:); 1902 – Strom Thurmond; 1906 – Otto Preminger; 1912 – Sonny Boy Williamson II♪ ♫:devil:; 1921 – Alvy Moore (Green Acres); 1932 – Little Richard:keys:; 1934 – Joan Didion; 1935 – Calvin Trillin; 1936 – James Lee Burke; 1938 – JJ Cale:shred::devil:(wrote Cocaine, Call Me The Breeze, After Midnight, and many other songs); 1938 – J.D. McDuffie:driving:; 1944 – Jeroen Krabbé (The Fugitive (1993 movie)); 1946 – José Carreras♪ ♫(one of The Three Tenors); 1947 – Jim Messina:shred:(Buffalo Springfield, Poco, Loggins & Messina); 1951 – Morgan Brittany; 1960 – Jack Russell♪ ♫(Great White); 1963 – Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards (British Olympic skier, subject of the movie Eddie The Eagle (<--great flick, btw)); 1963 – Carrie Hamilton (daughter of Carol Burnett); 1965 – John Rzeznik♪ ♫(The Goo Goo Dolls); 1968 – Margaret Cho; 1979 – Nick Stahl; 1980 – Jessica Paré; 1985 – Frankie Muniz (Malcolm In The Middle)

Deaths

1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; 1870 – Alexandre Dumas; 1895 – Gall (Hunkpapa Lakota war chief); 1926 – Claude Monet:artist:; 1951 – Shoeless Joe Jackson; 1955 – Glenn L. Martin (of Martin Marietta Corp); 1993 - Doug Hopkins♪ ♫(Gin Blossoms); 1998 – Albert Gore, Sr. (if only he'd worn a condom); 2002 – Roone Arledge; 2008 – Nina Foch; 2010 – Dandy Don Meredith; 2012 – Dave Brubeck:keys:; 2013 – Nelson Mandela; 2015 – Chuck Williams (founded Williams-Sonoma, Inc.)

December 6

Today is marked as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, by our friends in Canadia, informally referred to as White Ribbon Day.

There are 25 days remaining in 2016.

There are 18 days until Christmas.


Events

1534 – The city of Quito in Ecuador is founded by Spanish settlers led by Sebastián de Belalcázar.

1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.

1790 – The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia.

1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.

1877 – The first edition of The Washington Post is published.

1884 – The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed.

1897 – London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs.

1907 – A coal mine explosion at Monongah, West Virginia, kills 362 workers.

1917 – Halifax Explosion: A munitions explosion near Halifax, Nova Scotia kills more than 1,900 people in the largest artificial explosion up to that time.

1933 – U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene.

1941 – World War II: The United Kingdom and Canada declare war on Finland in support of the Soviet Union during the Continuation War. Camp X opens in Canada to begin training Allied Secret Agents for the War.

1949 - American blues artist, Leadbelly died. Huddie William Ledbetter wrote many songs including 'Goodnight Irene', ‘Cotton Fields’, 'The Rock Island Line', and ‘The Midnight Special'. Leadbelly was jailed several times for fights and knife related incidents, he was once jailed for shooting a man dead during an argument over a woman.

1953 – Vladimir Nabokov completes his controversial novel Lolita.

1967 – Adrian Kantrowitz performs the first human heart transplant in the United States.

1973 – The Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States House of Representatives votes 387 to 35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. (On November 27, the Senate confirmed him 92 to 3.)

1975 – The Troubles: Fleeing from the police, a Provisional IRA unit takes a British couple hostage in their flat on Balcombe Street, London, beginning a six-day siege.

1982 – The Troubles: The Irish National Liberation Army bombed a pub frequented by British soldiers in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing eleven soldiers and six civilians.

1986 - Europe were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'The Final Countdown'. They became only the second Swedish act to score a UK No.1. The song reached No.1 in 25 countries and the song's lyrics were inspired by David Bowie's song 'Space Oddity'.

1988 - American singer/songwriter Roy Orbison died of a heart attack aged 52.

1989 – The École Polytechnique massacre (or Montreal Massacre): An anti-feminist gunman murders 14 young women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.

1997 – A Russian Antonov An-124 Ruslan cargo plane crashes into an apartment complex near Irkutsk, Siberia, killing 67 people.

1998 – in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is victorious in presidential elections.

2005 – An Iranian Air Force C-130 military transport aircraft crashes into a ten-floor apartment building in a residential area of Tehran, killing all 84 people on board and 44 more people on the ground.

2006 – NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars.

2011 - American singer/songwriter Dobie Gray died from complications of cancer surgery in Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 71.

2013 - The electric guitar played by Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was sold at auction in New York for a record $965,000. The Fender Stratocaster had been in the possession of a New Jersey family for 48 years after Dylan left it on a private plane.

Births

1872 – William S. Hart; 1876 – Fred Duesenberg (Duesenberg Automobile & Motors Company); 1886 – Joyce Kilmer; 1896 – Ira Gershwin♪ ♫; 1898 – Alfred Eisenstaedt; 1900 – Agnes Moorehead ('Endora' on Bewitched); 1908 – Baby Face Nelson; 1917 – Irv Robbins (co-founded Baskin-Robbins); 1920 – Dave Brubeck:keys:; 1921 – Otto Graham; 1924 – Wally Cox (Mr. Peepers, voice of Underdog); 1934 – Nick Bockwinkel; 1936 – Kenneth Copeland; 1941 – Richard Speck; 1942 – Robb Royer:shred:(Bread); 1943 – Mike Smith:keys:(Dave Clark Five); 1948 – JoBeth Williams; 1952 – Craig Newmark (founded Craig's List); 1953 – Tom Hulce; 1955 – Steven Wright:lol2:; 1956 – Peter Buck:shred:(R.E.M.); 1956 – :devil:Randy Rhoads:shred:(Ozzy, Quiet Riot); 1967 – Judd Apatow

Deaths

343 – Saint Nicholas (WHAT?!:eek: St. Nick is dead?! Is Christmas cancelled??); 1889 – Jefferson Davis (President of The Confederate States of America); 1892 – Werner von Siemens (founded the Siemens Company); 1949 - Huddie 'Leadbelly' Ledbetter:shred:; 1955 – Honus Wagner; 1972 – Janet Munro (Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Swiss Family Robinson); 1988 – Roy Orbison♪ ♫(The Traveling Wilburys); 1989 – Frances Bavier ('Aunt Bee' on The Andy Griffith Show); 1989 – John Payne (Miracle on 34th Street, The Restless Gun); 1993 – Don Ameche (Cocoon, Trading Places); 2000 – Werner Klemperer ('Colonel Klink' on Hogan's Heroes); 2002 – Philip Berrigan; 2011 – Dobie Gray♪ ♫; 2014 – Ralph H. Baer (created the Magnavox Odyssey video game system)

December 7

Today is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day in the United States, commemorating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

Today is also International Civil Aviation Day, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly.

There are 24 days remaining in 2016.

There are 17 days until Christmas.


Events

43 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated.

1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.

1732 – The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London, England.

1776 – Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, arranges to enter the American military as a major general.

1869 – American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri.

1917 – World War I: The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.

1930 – W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts telecasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The telecast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.

1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1946 – A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, kills 119 people, the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history.

1963 – Instant replay makes its debut during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1967 - Otis Redding went into the studio to record '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay'. The song went on to be his biggest hit. Redding didn't see its release; he was killed three days later in a plane crash. Redding's familiar whistling, heard before the song's fade was the singer fooling around, he had intended to return to the studio at a later date to add words in place of the whistling.

1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

1974 - Carl Douglas started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Kung Fu Fighting'. The song was recorded in 10 minutes, had started out as a B-side and went on to sell over 10 million copies.

1977 - Inventor Dr Peter Carl Goldmark was killed in a car crash aged 71. Goldmark invented the long-playing microgroove record in 1945.

1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1987 – Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, a British Aerospace 146-200A, crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself.

1988 – Spitak earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.8 (surface wave magnitude) kills more than 25,000 people, injures 30,000 and leaves 500,000 homeless out of a population of 3,500,000. This day is commemorated in Armenia as Spitak Remembrance Day.

1993 – Long Island Rail Road shooting: Passenger Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR in Nassau County, New York.

1995 – The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

1999 – A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.: The Recording Industry Association of America sues the peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster, alleging copyright infringement.

2014 - Pink Floyd's classic album, The Dark Side Of The Moon made a surprise return to the Billboard chart when it landed at No.13, thanks to ultra-cheap pricing in the Google Play store where the album was discounted to 99-cents.

Births

521 – Columba; 1863 – Richard Warren Sears (co-founded Sears); 1873 – Willa Cather; 1888 – Hamilton Fish III; 1904 – Clarence Nash (voice of Donald Duck for 50 years); 1910 – Louis Prima♪ ♫; 1915 – Eli Wallach; 1923 – Ted Knight; 1928 – Noam Chomsky; 1928 – Mickey Thompson:driving:; 1932 – Ellen Burstyn; 1939 – Blackie Dammett (actor, father of Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis); 1942 – Harry Chapin♪ ♫; 1943 – John Bennett Ramsey (father of JonBenét Ramsey); 1947 – Johnny Bench; 1947 – James Keach (actor/producer/director, brother to Stacey Keach); 1949 – Tom Waits♪ ♫; 1956 – Larry Bird; 1958 – Tim Butler:bass:(The Psychedelic Furs); 1958 – Rick Rude; 1965 – Jeffrey Wright ('Felix Leiter' in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace); 1966 – C. Thomas Howell; 1979 – Sara Bareilles♪ ♫

Deaths

43 BC – Cicero; 1817 – William Bligh; 1894 – Ferdinand de Lesseps (co-developed the Suez Canal); 1902 – Thomas Nast; 1970 – Rube Goldberg; 1975 – Thornton Wilder; 1985 – Robert Graves; 1989 – Haystacks Calhoun; 1990 – Joan Bennett; 2004 – Jerry Scoggins (sang the theme to Beverly Hillbillies, "The Ballad Of Jed Clampett"); 2004 – Jay Van Andel (co-founded Amway, damn his eyes); 2006 – Jeane Kirkpatrick; 2011 – Harry Morgan ('Col. Potter' on M*A*S*H (tv series); 2013 – Chick Willis:shred:

This Day in History
 

December 8

Today Japan celebrates Bodhi Day, commemorating the day the Buddha experienced enlightenment.

There are 23 days remaining in 2016.

There are 16 days until Christmas.



Events

877 – Louis the Stammerer (son of Charles the Bald) is c-c-c-crowned ki-ki-ki-ruler of the West Frankish Ki-Ki-ingdom at C-C-Compiègne.

1813 – Premiere of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

1922 – Northern Ireland ceases to be part of the Irish Free State.

1927 – The Brookings Institution, one of the United States' oldest think tanks, is founded through the merger of three organizations that had been created by philanthropist Robert S. Brookings.

1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares December 7 to be "a date which will live in infamy", after which the U.S. declares war on Japan.

1953 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, which leads to an American program to supply equipment and information on nuclear power to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world.

1962 – Workers at four New York City newspapers (this later increases to nine) go on strike for 114 days.

1963 - Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped at gunpoint from a hotel in Lake Tahoe. He was released two days later after his father paid out the $240,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers, who were later captured, and sentenced to long prison terms. In order to communicate with the kidnappers via a payphone the senior Sinatra carried a roll of dimes with him throughout this ordeal, which became a lifetime habit, he is said to have been buried with a roll of dimes [and a fifth of Jack Daniel's].

1966 – The Greek ship SS Heraklion sinks in a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200.

1972 – United Airlines Flight 553, a Boeing 737, crashes after aborting its landing attempt at Chicago Midway International Airport, killing 45. This is the first-ever loss of a Boeing 737.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota in New York City. [Hard to believe that was 36 years ago.]

1984 - Vince Neil from Motley Crue was involved in a car accident in Redondo Beach, Ca, which killed Nick Dingley from Hanoi Rocks and injured two other passengers. Neil was jailed for 20 days and paid $2.6 million in compensation.

1988 – A United States Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II (affectionately known as The Warthog) crashes into an apartment complex in Remscheid, Germany, killing 5 people and injuring 50 others.

2000 - A plaque to commemorate the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's death was unveiled outside his childhood home in Liverpool.

2004 - Former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott was one of five people killed after a man stormed the stage during a Damageplan show at the Alrosa Villa Club in Columbus. Nathan Gale, aged 25, began firing at the band and crowd, was then shot and killed by a police officer who arrived shortly after the first shots were fired.

2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the first launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

2010 – The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus at a distance of about 80,800 km (~50,200 miles).

2013 - Metallica played a gig inside a dome at the Argentine Antarctic Base Carlini, thus becoming the first band ever to play on all seven continents. During the concert audio was transmitted to the audience through headphones.

Births

65 BC – Horace; 1542 – Mary, Queen of Scots; 1765 – Eli Whitney (invented the cotton gin); 1861 – William C. Durant (founded General Motors and Chevrolet); 1864 – Camille Claudel:artist:; 1865 – Jean Sibelius:violin:; 1886 – Diego Rivera:artist:; 1894 – E. C. Segarm (created Popeye); 1894 – James Thurber (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty); 1911 – Lee J. Cobb; 1914 – Floyd Tillman ; 1916 – Richard Fleischer; 1922 – Jean Ritchie ; 1925 – Sammy Davis, Jr. ; 1927 – Ferdie The Fight Doctor Pacheco; 1930 – Maximilian Schell; 1931 – Bob Arum (boxing promoter); 1933 – Flip Wilson; 1936 – David Carradine:jagoff:; 1937 – James MacArthur ('Danno' on the original Hawaii Five-O); 1939 – Jerry Butler (The Impressions); 1939 – James Galway (flautist, a wee one); 1939 – Soko Richardson:drummer:(John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, The Ike & Tina Turner Revue); 1941 – Bobby Elliott:drummer:(The Hollies); 1943 – Jim Morrison (The Doors); 1946 – John Rubinstein; 1947 – Gregg Allman:shred::keys:(Allman Bros Band); 1950 – Rick Baker (sfx make-up artist); 1950 – Dan Hartman ; 1953 – Kim Basinger; 1953 -SAM KINISON; 1957 – Phil Collen (Def Leppard); 1961 – Ann Coulter; 1962 – Steve Elkington; 1962 – Marty Friedman:shred:(Megadeth); 1963 – Greg Howe ; 1964 – Teri Hatcher ("They're real, and they're spectacular."); 1966 – Sinéad O'Connor (Irish attention whore); 1972 – Frank Shamrock; 1973 – Corey Taylor (Slipknot); 1975 – Kevin 'Happy' Harvick:driving::flipbird:; 1977 – Ryan Newman:driving::flipbird:; 1982 – Nick

December 9

Sweden and Finland mark today as Anna's Day, the day to start the preparation process for the lutefisk that is to be eaten on Christmas Eve. [Lutefisk...Yeah, no. I ain't eating anything that contains lye as an ingredient.]

And here in the Land Of Diabetes, we celebrate National Pastry Day. Bon Appétit.

International Anti-Corruption Day is observed annually on this day. So, try not to bribe anyone today. Do it tomorrow.

There are 22 days remaining in 2016.

There are 15 days until Christmas.



Events

536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flee the capital.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops lose the Battle of Great Bridge, and leave Virginia soon afterward.

1793 – New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.

1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas.

1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.

1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American governor of a U.S. state.

1875 – The Massachusetts Rifle Association, "America's Oldest Active Gun Club", is founded.

1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.

1911 – A mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.

1935 – Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.

1935 – The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded for the first time. The winner is halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.

1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking).

1946 – The "Subsequent Nuremberg trials" begin with the "Doctors' trial", prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.

1958 – The John Birch Society is founded in the United States.

1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.

1962 – The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona.

1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined the object. They claimed it was a Russian satellite. The documents were lost in the 1990s, they claim.

1965 – A Charlie Brown Christmas, first in a series of Peanuts television specials, debuts on CBS.

1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).

1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.

1987 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

2003 - Ozzy Osbourne was admitted to Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire after being injured in a quad bike accident at his UK home. The 55 year-old singer broke his collarbone, eight ribs and a vertebra in his neck.

2008 – The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Births

1608 – John Milton; 1883 – Joseph Pilates (developed Pilates fitness regimen); 1886 – Clarence Birdseye (pioneered frozen foods); 1887 – Tim Moore ('Kingfish' on Amos 'n' Andy (tv series)); 1898 – Emmett Kelly:biggrinje(clown, celebrated as Weary Willie Day); 1904 – Bob Livingston; 1905 – Dalton Trumbo; 1906 – 'Amazing' Grace Hopper (US Navy Rear Admiral, designed COBOL programming language, namesake of the USS Hopper & the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer); 1909 – Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; 1911 – Broderick Crawford; 1912 – Tip O'Neill; 1916 – Kirk Douglas - 100 years old today:devil:; 1922 – Redd Foxx:devil(Sanford & Son, The Royal Family); 1928 – Dick Van Patten (Eight Is Enough); 1929 – John Cassavetes (Rosemary's Baby, The Dirty Dozen); 1930 – Buck Henry; 1932 – Billy Edd Wheeler♪ ♫; 1933 – Morton Downey, Jr.:scream:; 1934 – Judi Dench; 1934 – Junior Wells♪ ♫; 1938 – David Houston♪ ♫; 1938 – Deacon Jones; 1941 – Beau Bridges; 1942 – Dick Butkus; 1944 – Neil Innes♪ ♫(The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band); 1945 – Michael Nouri; 1946 - Walter 'Clyde' Orange:drummer:(The Commodores); 1946 – Dennis Dunaway:bass:(Alice Cooper); 1947 – Tom Daschle; 1949 – Tom Kite; 1950 – Joan Armatrading♪ ♫; 1952 – Michael Dorn ('Worf' on Star Trek:TNG); 1953 – John Malkovich; 1954 - Jack Sonni♪ ♫(Dire Straits); 1957 – Donny Osmond; 1958 – Nick Seymour:bass:(Crowded House); 1961 – David Anthony Higgins (Mike & Molly); 1962 – Felicity Huffman; 1964 – Paul Landers:shred:(Rammstein); 1968 – Brian Bell♪ ♫(Weezer); 1969 – Jakob Dylan♪ ♫(The Wallflowers, son of Bob Dylan); 1969 – Lori Greiner (Shark Tank); 1971 – Geoff Barrow♪ ♫(Portishead); 1972 – Tré Cool:drummer:(Green Day); 1978 – Jesse Metcalfe (Desperate Housewives)

Deaths

1935 – Walter Liggett; 1992 – Vincent Gardenia; 1995 – Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan; 1996 – Mary Leakey (anthropologist, wife of Louis Leakey); 1998 – Archie Moore:boxers:; 2006 – Georgia Gibbs♪ ♫(real name? Frieda Lipschitz, no schit); 2009 – Gene Barry (Bat Masterson, Burke's Law); 2012 – Norman Joseph Woodland (co-created the bar code); 2013 – Eleanor Parker ('the Baroness' in The Sound Of Music); 2014 – Mary Ann Mobley:love:

December 10

Today is internationally observed as Human Rights Day, commemorating the UN General Assembly's proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec 10, 1948.

Today is the 345th day of 2016, and there are 21 days remaining in the year.

There are 14 days until Christmas.


Events

1317 – The "Nyköping Banquet" - King Birger of Sweden treacherously seizes his two brothers Valdemar, Duke of Finland and Eric, Duke of Södermanland, who were subsequently starved to death in the dungeon of Nyköping Castle.

1520 – Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate.

1541 – Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham are executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII.

1684 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum (On the Motion of Bodies in an Orbit), is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.

1799 – France adopts the metre as its official unit of length. Currently, the metre is defined as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458ths seconds.:right:

1817 – Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state. Welcome to the Union, Big Sarge:welcome:.

1861 – American Civil War: The Confederate States of America accept a rival state government's pronouncement that declares Kentucky to be the 13th state of the Confederacy.

1864 – American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.

1884 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.

1901 – The first Nobel Prizes are awarded.

1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

1948 – The Human Rights Convention is signed by the United Nations.

1953 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill received the Nobel Prize in literature.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_literature.

1955 – Mighty Mouse Playhouse premieres on American television.

1967 - American soul singer & songwriter Otis Redding was killed in a plane crash, aged 26. Redding and his band had made an appearance in Cleveland, Ohio on the local ‘Upbeat’ television show the previous day. The plane carrying Otis Redding and his band crashed at 3:28 pm into icy waters of Lake Monoma near Madison. Redding was killed in the crash along with members from the The Bar-Kays, Jimmy King, Ron Caldwell, Phalin Jones and Carl Cunningham. Trumpet player Ben Cauley was the only person to survive the crash.

1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo.

1971 - Playing the first of two nights at London's Rainbow Theatre, in England, Frank Zappa was pushed off stage by Trevor Howell, the jealous boyfriend of an audience member. Zappa fell onto the concrete-floored orchestra pit - the band thought Zappa had been killed. He suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing. This accident resulted in him using a wheelchair for an extended period, forcing him off the road for over half a year.

1973, The CBGB Club (Country, BlueGrass, and Blues), opened in the lower eastside of New York City. Founded by Hilly Kristal, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands.

1993 – The last shift leaves Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland. The closure of the 156-year-old pit marks the end of the old County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages.

1999 - Bassist for The Band, Rick Danko died in his sleep at his home near Woodstock, New York.

Births

1787 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (founded the American School for the Deaf); 1830 – Emily Dickinson; 1851 – Melvil Dewey (Dewey Decimal System); 1886 – Victor McLaglen; 1903 – Una Merkel; 1911 – Chet Huntley; 1914 – Dorothy Lamour; 1916 – Walt Arfons:driving:(half-brother to Art Arfons); 1926 – Guitar Slim:shred:; 1941 – Fionnula Flanagan; 1947 – Douglas Kenney (co-founded National Lampoon); 1951 – Johnny Rodriguez♪ ♫; 1952 – Susan Dey; 1956 – Rod Blagojevich; 1957 – Michael Clarke Duncan; 1958 – John J. York ('Scorpio' on General Hospital); 1959 – Wolf Hoffmann:shred:(Accept); 1960 – Kenneth Branagh; 1961 – Nia Peeples:love:; 1964 – Bobby Flay; 1965 – Greg Giraldo:lol2:; 1965 – J Mascis:shred:(Dinosaur Jr.); 1971 – Brian Nichols; 1974 – Meg White:drummer:(The White Stripes); 1978 – Summer Phoenix (Russkies, SLC Punk!, sister to River & Joaquin Phoenix, married to Casey Affleck); 1985 – Raven-Symoné (The Cosby Show)

Deaths

1541 – Thomas Culpeper:behead:; 1541 – Francis Dereham (hanged, drawn, quartered); 1896 – Alfred Nobel (invented Dynamite and founded the Nobel Prize); 1909 – Red Cloud; 1920 – Horace Elgin Dodge (co-founded Dodge); 1946 – Damon Runyon; 1967 - Otis Redding♪ ♫; 1967 – Ronnie Caldwell:keys:(Bar-Kays); 1977 – Adolph Rupp:devil:(University of Kentucky basketball coach 1930 - 1972, namesake of UK's Rupp Arena); 1978 – Ed Wood; 1979 – Ann Dvorak; 1990 – Armand Hammer; 1990 – Armand Hammer (founded Occidental Petroleum); 1996 – Faron Young♪ ♫; 1999 – Rick Danko:bass:(The Band); 2002 – Ian MacNaughton (director/producer Monty Python's Flying Circus); 2005 – Richard Pryor:lol2:; 2015 – Ron Bouchard:driving:

December 11

Today the U.S. state of Indiana commemorates Indiana Day, celebrating the day Indiana became a state.

Today is also International Mountain Day.

There are 20 days remaining in 2016.

There are 13 days until Christmas.


Events

361 – Julian enters Constantinople as sole Emperor of the Roman Empire.

630 – Muhammad leads an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca.

1282 – Battle of Orewin Bridge: Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales, is killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, in mid-Wales.

1688 – Glorious Revolution: James II of England, while trying to flee to France, allegedly throws the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames.

1792 – French Revolution: King Louis XVI of France is put on trial for treason by the National Convention.

1816 – Indiana becomes the 19th U.S. state.

1917 – World War I: British General Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot and declares martial law.

1934 – Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the last time.

1936 – Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII's abdication as King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India, becomes effective.

1941 – World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.

1946 – The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.

1962 – Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, is the last person to be executed in Canada.

1964 – Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

1964 - Soul singer Sam Cooke was shot dead at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, California. Bertha Franklin, manager of the motel, told police that she shot and killed Cooke in self-defense because he had attacked her. Police found Cooke's body in Franklin's apartment-office, clad only in a sports jacket and shoes, but no shirt, pants or underwear. The shooting was ultimately ruled a justifiable homicide.

1971 - UK comedian Benny Hill was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with the innuendo-laden novelty song, 'Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)', giving Hill his only No.1 and the Christmas No.1 hit of 1971. The song was originally written in 1955 as the introduction to an unfilmed screenplay about Hill's milkman experiences.

1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

1973 - KISS guitarist Ace Frehley was nearly electrocuted during a concert in Florida when he touched a short-circuited light. The guitarist was carried from the stage but returned 10 minutes later to finish the show.

1978 – The Lufthansa heist is committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time.

1980 – The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund) is enacted by the U.S. Congress.

1997 – The Kyoto Protocol opens for signature.

2005 – The Buncefield Oil Depot catches fire in Hemel Hempstead, England.

2005 – Cronulla riots: Thousands of White Australians demonstrate against ethnic violence resulting in a riot against anyone thought to be Lebanese in Cronulla, New South Wales; these are followed up by retaliatory ethnic attacks on Cronulla.

2008 – Bernard Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Births

1830 – Kamehameha V (king of Hawaii); 1882 – Fiorello H. La Guardia; 1889 – Walter Knott (Knott's Berry Farm); 1912 – Carlo Ponti; 1923 – Lilian Cahn (co-founded Coach, Inc. fashion house); 1926 – Big Mama Thornton♪ ♫; 1931 – Rita Moreno:love:; 1940 – David Gates♪ ♫(Bread); 1940 – Donna Mills (Knots Landing); 1944 – Lynda Day George (Mission: Impossible); 1944 – Brenda Lee♪ ♫; 1947 – Teri Garr (Young Frankenstein, Tootsie); 1949 – Christina Onassis; 1953 – Bess Armstrong; 1954 – Jermaine Jackson♪ ♫; 1958 – Nikki Sixx:bass:(Mötley Crüe); 1964 – Justin Currie♪ ♫(Del Amitri); 1964 – Dave Schools:bass:(Widespread Panic); 1966 – Gary Dourdan (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation); 1967 – Mo'Nique; 1969 – Max Martini (The Unit); 1970 – Victoria Fuller:love:(Playboy Playmate); 1973 – Mos Def♪ ♫; 1996 – Hailee Steinfeld ('Mattie Ross' in True Grit (2010))

Deaths

1282 – Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (last native Prince of Wales); 1872 – Kamehameha V (king of Hawaii); 1880 – Oliver Winchester (founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company); 1964 – Sam Cooke♪ ♫; 1964 – Percy Kilbride (Pa Kettle); 1971 – Maurice McDonald (co-founded McDonald's); 2008 – Bettie Page:love:

December 12

There are 19 days remaining in 2016.

There are 12 days until Christmas.


Events

884 – King Carloman II dies after a hunting accident. He is succeeded by his cousin, emperor Charles the Fat, who reunites the Frankish Empire for the last time.

1098 – First Crusade: Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan: Crusaders breach the town's walls and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants. After finding themselves with insufficient food, they reportedly resort to cannibalism.

1408 – The Order of the Dragon a monarchical chivalric order is created by Sigismund of Luxembourg, then king of Hungary.

1787 – Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, five days after Delaware became the first.

1862 – American Civil War: USS Cairo sinks on the Yazoo River, becoming the first armored ship to be sunk by a controlled mine.

1866 – Oaks explosion: The worst mining disaster in England kills 383 miners and rescuers.

1870 – Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the second black U.S. congressman, the first being Hiram Revels.

1901 – Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal (the letter "S" in Morse Code), at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland.

1917 – In Nebraska, Father Edward J. Flanagan founds Boys Town as a farm village for wayward boys.

1940 – World War II: Approximately 70 people are killed in the Marples Hotel, Fitzalan Square, Sheffield, as a result of a German air raid.

1941 – World War II: Fifty-four Japanese A6M Zero fighters raid Batangas Field, Philippines. Jesús Villamor and four Filipino fighter pilots fend them off.

1941 – World War II: The United Kingdom declares war on Bulgaria. Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. India declares war on Japan.

1946 – A fire at an ice plant in Hudson Heights, Manhattan spreads to an adjacent tenement, killing 37 people. [A fire. At an ice plant.:neutral:]

1957 - Still married to his first wife Jane Mitcham, Jerry Lee Lewis secretly married his 13-year old second cousin Myra Gale Brown.

1979 – The 8.2 Mw Tumaco earthquake shakes Colombia and Ecuador with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing 300–600, and generating a large (~20 feet) tsunami.

1985 – Arrow Air Flight 1285, a McDonnell Douglas DC-8, crashes after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland, killing all 256 people on board, including 236 members of the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division(:devil:) from Ft. Campbell, KY.

1988 – The Clapham Junction rail crash kills thirty-five and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains—one of the worst train crashes in the United Kingdom.

2000 – The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore. [Bush won, icydk ;)]

Births

1745 – John Jay (1st Chief Justice of the United States); 1805 – Henry Wells (co-founded Wells Fargo and American Express); 1806 – Stand Watie (Cherokee Confederate General); 1821 – Gustave Flaubert (author Madame Bovary); 1863 – Edvard Munch:artist:; 1881 – Harry Warner (co-founded Warner Bros); 1893 – Edward G. Robinson; 1900 – Sammy Davis, Sr.♪ ♫; 1915 – Frank Sinatra♪ ♫:eyeball::eyeball:; 1917 – James Wall (Capt. Kangaroo's African-American neighbor 'Mr. Baxter'); 1923 – Bob Barker; 1924 – Ed Koch; 1925 – Ted Kennedy (no, not that one, this one was a hockey player); 1927 – Robert Noyce (co-founded Intel Corporation); 1937 – Buford Pusser (subject of the Walking Tall movies); 1938 – Connie Francis♪ ♫; 1939 – Terry Kirkman♪ ♫(The Association); 1940 – Dionne Warwick♪ ♫; 1943 – Dickey Betts:shred:(The Allman Bros, "People down in Georgia come from near and far
To hear Richard Betts pick on that red guitar"); 1943 – Grover Washington, Jr.♪ ♫; 1944 – Rob Tyner:bass:(MC5); 1946 – Emerson Fittipaldi:driving:; 1947 – Wings Hauser; 1952 – Cathy Rigby:love:; 1953 – Bruce Kulick:shred:(KISS, Grand Funk Railroad, Union); 1957 – Cy Curnin♪ ♫(The Fixx); 1957 – Sheila E.:drummer:(Prince, The New Power Generation); 1966 – Royce Gracie:devil:(Brazilian mixed martial artist); 1966 – Ian Paisley, Jr.; 1970 – Jennifer Connelly; 1970 – Regina Hall; 1972 – Hank Williams III♪ ♫(son of Bocephus, grandson of Luke The Drifter); 1975 – Mayim Bialik (Blossom, 'Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler' on The Big Bang Theory)

Deaths

884 – Carloman II; 1586 – Stephen Báthory; 1889 – Robert Browning; 1939 – Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.; 1968 – Tallulah Bankhead; 1976 – Jack Cassidy (actor, father to Shaun & David Cassidy, married to Shirley Jones); 1985 – Anne Baxter; 1985 – Ian Stewart:keys:(The Rolling Stones); 1999 – Joseph Heller (author Catch-22); 2000 – George Montgomery; 2006 – Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond, Young Frankenstein); 2006 – Alan Shugart (co-founded Seagate Technology); 2007 – Ike Turner♪ ♫; 2008 – Van Johnson (Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo); 2013 – Tom Laughlin ("I'm gonna take this right foot, and I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face...and you wanna know something? There's not a damn thing you're gonna be able to do about it."); 2014 – Norman Bridwell (created Clifford the Big Red Dog)

I thank you.

December 13

There are 18 days remaining in 2016.

There are 11 days until Christmas.


Events

1545 – Council of Trent begins.

1577 – Sir Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.

1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the National Guard of the United States.

1642 – Abel Tasman reaches New Zealand.

1769 – Dartmouth College is founded by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, with a royal charter from King George III, on land donated by Royal governor John Wentworth.

1862 – American Civil War: At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee defeats Union Major General Ambrose Burnside.

1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: The city of Nanjing, defended by the National Revolutionary Army under the command of General Tang Shengzhi, falls to the Japanese. This is followed by the Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese troops rape and slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians.

1949 – The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

1960 – While Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaims him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor.

1969 - Diana Ross took the Latin Casino in Philadelphia to court for $27,500 after her two pet dogs died after eating cyanide tablets left by an exterminator in her dressing room. [I guess the exterminator also left little tiny glasses of water so the bugs could take the cyanide tablets and kill themselves.]

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

1977 – Air Indiana Flight 216 crashes near Evansville Regional Airport, killing 29, including the University of Evansville basketball team, support staff, and boosters of the team.

1988 – PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat gives a speech at a UN General Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, after United States authorities refused to grant him a visa to visit UN headquarters in New York.

2003 – Iraq War: Operation Red Dawn: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit.

Births

1816 – Werner von Siemens (founded Siemens AG); 1818 – Mary Todd Lincoln (16th FLOTUS); 1887 – Alvin C. York; 1908 – Van Heflin; 1916 – Archie Moore:boxers:; 1920 – George P. Shultz; 1925 – Dick Van Dyke; 1929 – Christopher Plummer; 1930 – Robert Prosky (Cheers, Hill Street Blues, Christine); 1934 – Richard D. Zanuck; 1948 – Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter:shred:(Steely Dan, The Doobie Bros); 1948 – Uncle Ted Nugent:shred:; 1948 – Brian Wilson (no, not that one, this one's a politician in the UK); 1949 – Randy Owen♪ ♫(Alabama); 1950 – Wendie Malick (Dream On, Hot In Cleveland, Frasier); 1952 – Junkyard Dog (wrestler); 1954 – John Anderson♪ ♫(sang "Swingin'"); 1957 – Steve Buscemi; 1957 – Morris Day♪ ♫(The Time); 1967 – Jamie Foxx; 1967 – NeNe Leakes; 1975 – Tom DeLonge♪ ♫(Blink-182); 1981 – Amy Lee♪ ♫(Evanescence); 1988 – Rickie Fowler; 1989 – Taylor Swift♪ ♫

Deaths

1721 – Alexander Selkirk; 1961 – Grandma Moses:artist:; 2006 – Lamar Hunt; 2007 – Floyd Red Crow Westerman

What. the. ever. loving. fuck.

I am not feeling it this year. Just completely indifferent. I'm going to miss my online-ordering deadlines, and then I'm going to really be screwed.

December 14

Today is recognized internationally as Monkey Day. Just remember, don't monkey with another monkey's monkey.

Today is also Forty-Seven Ronin Remembrance Day.

There are 17 days left in 2016.

There are 10 days until Christmas.



Events

557 – Constantinople is severely damaged by an earthquake.

1287 – St. Lucia's flood: The Zuiderzee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, killing over 50,000 people.

1542 – Princess Mary Stuart becomes Mary, Queen of Scots.

1814 – War of 1812: The Royal Navy seizes control of Lake Borgne, Louisiana.

1819 – Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state.

1836 – The Toledo War unofficially ends.

1903 – The Wright brothers make their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1911 – Roald Amundsen's team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.

1940 – Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California.

1955 – Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania and Spain join the United Nations through United Nations Security Council Resolution 109.

1963 – The dam containing the Baldwin Hills Reservoir bursts, killing five people and damaging hundreds of homes in Los Angeles, California.

1964 – American Civil Rights Movement: Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Congress can use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to fight discrimination.

1968 - Marvin Gaye scored his first US No.1 single when 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' started a five-week run at the top.

1994 – Construction begins on the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river.

1998 - Billy Preston pleaded guilty to insurance fraud in a Los Angeles court and agreed to testify against six other defendants who allegedly participated in starting fires, staging thefts and rigging car crashes for which a total of 18 fraudulent insurance claims were filed. Preston received five years of probation and one year in jail to run concurrently with a sentence he was already serving for violating probation on a prior conviction for cocaine possession.

1999 – Torrential rains cause flash floods in Vargas, Venezuela, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the destruction of thousands of homes, and the complete collapse of the state's infrastructure.

2008 – Muntadhar al-Zaidi throws his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq.

2012 – Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, are killed in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

Births

1546 – Tycho Brahe; 1896 – Jimmy Doolittle; 1902 – Frances Bavier ('Aunt Bee'); 1908 – Morey Amsterdam; 1911 – Spike Jones♪ ♫; 1915 – Dan Dailey; 1922 – Don Hewitt (created 60 Minutes); 1932 – Charlie Rich♪ ♫; 1935 – Lee Remick:heartpump; 1946 – Patty Duke; 1948 – Dee Wallace; 1954 – Alan Kulwicki:driving:(introduced the Polish Victory Lap); 1960 – James Comey; 1971 – Natascha McElhone; 1988 – Vanessa Hudgens:love:

Deaths

1799 – George Washington (1st POTUS); 1920 – George Gipp ("Win just one for the Gipper."); 1943 – John Harvey Kellogg (co-invented corn flakes); 1963 – Dinah Washington♪ ♫; 1964 – William Bendix; 1985 – Roger Maris; 1989 – Jock Mahoney; 1993 – Myrna Loy; 1994 – Orval Faubus; 1998 – Norman Fell ('Mr. Roper' on Three's Company); 2003 – Jeanne Crain; 2006 – Mike Evans ('Lionel Jefferson' on The Jeffersons, co-created Good Times); 2013 – Peter O'Toole:drunk:; 2014 – Bess Myerson

December 15

Today is Bill of Rights Day in the U.S., as declared by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, commemorating the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

Concurrently, today is Second Amendment Day in South Carolina, celebrating the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to the people keep and bear arms, "One right, protecting all others."

And, much more importantly, today is International Tea Day.

There are 16 days remaining in 2016.

There are 9 days until Christmas.



Events

1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Nashville: Union forces under George Thomas almost completely destroy the Army of Tennessee under John Bell Hood.

1890 – Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is killed on Standing Rock Indian Reservation, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

1906 – The London Underground's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opens.

1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol. [And there was much, much rejoicing.:drunk:]

1939 – Gone with the Wind receives its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.

1941 – The Holocaust: German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Soviet Union.

1943 - American jazz musician, singer and composer, Fats Waller died of pneumonia on a train trip near Kansas City, Missouri. In 1926 Waller was kidnapped at gunpoint in Chicago and driven to a club owned by gangster Al Capone. Inside the club he was ordered to perform at what turned out to be a surprise birthday party for the gangster.

1944 - Hank Williams married Audrey Sheppard, with the ceremony taking place at a Texaco filling station in Andalusia, Alabama.

1956 - Elvis Presley gave his final performance on Louisiana Hayride, a live radio program that was broadcast on KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana. Presley made 50 appearances on the show. At the end of the show, Horace Logan first made the now legendary phrase "Elvis has left the building".

1960 – Richard Pavlick is arrested for plotting to assassinate U.S. President-Elect John F. Kennedy.

1961 – Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.

1969 - John Lennon played what would be his final ever gig in the UK when he appeared at The Lyceum Ballroom, London, with the Plastic Ono Band in a UNICEF 'Peace For Christmas' benefit.

1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully lands on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet.

1973 – John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10.

1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-II.

1981 – A suicide car bombing targeting the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, levels the embassy and kills 61 people, including Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon. The attack is considered the first modern suicide bombing.

1984 - Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid entered the UK chart at No.1 and stayed at the top for five weeks. It became the biggest selling UK single of all time with sales over 3 and a half million. Band Aid was masterminded by former Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof, who had been moved by a TV news story of famine in Ethiopia.

1988 - Soul singer James Brown was sentenced to six years in prison for various offenses including possession of weapons and resisting arrest.

1993 – The Troubles: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

1999 - Boy George was knocked unconscious when a mirror ball fell on his head during a show in Dorset, England. [The visual of Boy George being clobbered by a disco ball and piling up like a sack of potatoes is just hilarious to me.:lol2]

2000 – The third reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down.

2001 - Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh was given an honorary Doctorate of Music from Kent State University in Ohio.

2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 spent to stabilize it, without fixing its famous lean.

2005 – Introduction of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor into USAF active service.

2006 - The co-founder of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun died, aged 83. Ertegun founded Atlantic Records with Herb Abramson in 1947.

2009 – Boeing's 787 Dreamliner makes its maiden flight from Seattle, Washington.

2014 – Man Haron Monis takes 18 hostages inside a café in Martin Place for 16 hours in Sydney. Monis and two hostages are killed when police raid the café the following morning.

Continued in next post

Continued from previous post

Births

37 – Nero; 1832 – Gustave Eiffel (co-designed the Eiffel Tower); 1852 – Henri Becquerel (namesake of the measuring unit for radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq)); 1861 – Charles Duryea ("Ladies Phaeton" was considered the first successful gas-engine vehicle built in the U.S.); 1892 – J. Paul Getty; 1911 – Stan Kenton:keys:; 1918 – Jeff Chandler; 1919 – Max Yasgur (Woodstock was held on his farm); 1921 – Alan Freed (radio dj, "The man who gave 'Rock 'n' Roll' its name."); 1923 – Freeman Dyson; 1928 – Ernest Ashworth♪ ♫; 1933 – Tim Conway:lol2:; 1939 – Cindy Birdsong♪ ♫(The Supremes, Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles); 1942 – Dave Clark:drummer:(The Dave Clark Five); 1946 – Carmine Appice:drummer:(Vanilla Fudge, King Cobra, Blue Murder); 1949 – Don Johnson; 1950 – Melanie Chartoff (Fridays); 1955 – Paul Simonon:bass:(The Clash); 1957 – Tim Reynolds:shred:(Dave Matthews Band); 1962 – Tim Gaines:bass:(Stryper); 1963 – Helen Slater (Supergirl); 1970 – Michael Shanks (Stargate SG-1, Saving Hope); 1971 – Clint Lowery:shred:(Sevendust, Korn); 1972 – Rodney Harrison:devil:; 1981 – Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey)

Deaths

1675 – Johannes Vermeer:artist:; 1683 – Izaak Walton (author The Compleat Angler); 1878 – Alfred Bird (invented baking powder); 1890 – Sitting Bull (Hunkpapa Lakota chief); 1943 – Fats Waller:keys:; 1944 – Glenn Miller♪ ♫(Glen Miller Orchestra); 1962 – Charles Laughton; 1966 – Walt Disney; 1978 – Chill Wills (McLintock!, Giant, The Alamo); 2006 - Ahmet Ertegün♪ ♫(co-founded Atlantic Records); 2009 – Oral Roberts (porn star); 2010 – Blake Edwards; 2010 – Bob Feller; 2013 – Joan Fontaine (Rebecca, Suspicion, The Witches, younger sister to Olivia De Havilland, cousin to the designer of the De Havilland Mosquito)

December 16

There are 15 days remaining in 2016.

There are 8 days until Christmas.



Events

1431 – Hundred Years' War: Henry VI of England is crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris.

1497 – Vasco da Gama passes the Great Fish River, where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1653 – English Interregnum: The Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1773 – Boston Tea Party: Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

1811 – The first two in a series of four severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri. [<--Very interesting read. The Mississippi river flowed backwards, sand geysers erupted, Tennessee's Reelfoot Lake was formed, soil liquifaction...It was a helluva thing, a helluva thing.]

1850 – The Charlotte Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1880 – Outbreak of the First Boer War between the Boer South African Republic and the British Empire.

1907 – The American Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world.

1920 – The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

1930 – Bank robber Herman Lamm and members of his crew are killed by a 200-strong posse, following a botched bank robbery, in Clinton, Indiana.

1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempt to escape from the American federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay; neither is ever seen again.

1944 – The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1947 – William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.

1950 – Korean War: U.S. President Harry S Truman declares a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight in support of communist North Korea.

1960 – A United Airlines Douglas DC-8 and a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation collide over Staten Island, New York and crash, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft and six more on the ground.

1965 – Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland sends U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a request for 243,000 more men by the end of 1966.

1978 – Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.

1979 – Libya joins four other OPEC nations in raising crude oil prices, which has an immediate, dramatic effect on the United States.

1985 – Big Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of New York's Gambino crime family.

Births

1485 – Catherine of Aragon; 1770 – Ludwig van Beethoven:keys:; 1775 – Jane Austen; 1899 – Noël Coward; 1917 – Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey); 1928 – Terry Carter (McCloud, Battlestar Galactica); 1928 – Philip K. Dick; 1936 – Morris Dees (co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center); 1937 – Joyce Bulifant (The Mary Tyler Moore Show); 1938 – Liv Ullmann; 1941 – Lesley Stahl; 1943 – Steven Bochco; 1945 – Patti Deutsch (Match Game panelist); 1945 – Tony Hicks♪ ♫(The Hollies); 1946 – Benny Andersson♪ ♫(ABBA); 1947 – Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire); 1949 – Billy Gibbons:shred:(ZZ Top); 1951 – Robben Ford:shred:; 1955 – Xander Berkeley (24, The Mentalist, Nikita); 1961 – Shane Black (screenwriter Lethal Weapon, co-wrote & directed Iron Man 3, director Kiss Kiss Bang Bang); 1961 – Bill Hicks:lol2:; 1961 – Jon Tenney (The Closer, Major Crimes); 1962 – William 'Refrigerator' Perry:devil:; 1963 – Benjamin Bratt; 1963 – James Mangold (director Walk The Line, Girl Interrupted, 3:10 To Yuma (2007)); 1971 – Michael McCary♪ ♫(Boyz II Men); 1988 – Anna Popplewell (The Chronicles of Narnia film series)

Deaths

1263 – Haakon IV of Norway; 1859 – Wilhelm Grimm (the younger of The Bros Grimm); 1965 – W. Somerset Maugham; 1980 – Colonel Harland Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken); 1982 – Colin Chapman (founded Lotus Cars); 1985 – Thomas Bilotti (mobster); 1985 – Paul Castellano (mob boss); 1989 – Lee Van Cleef; 1993 – Moses Gunn; 2003 – Gary Stewart♪ ♫; 2007 – Dan Fogelberg♪ ♫; 2013 – Ray Price♪ ♫

December 17

By Presidential Proclamation, today is celebrated as Wright Brothers Day in the U.S.

Concurrently, today is Pan American Aviation Day, furthering, and stimulating interest in, aviation in the American countries.

Today is recognized internationally as a Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, originally conceived as a memorial to the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle, WA.

And, if you happen to live in ancient Rome, you can celebrate Saturnalia today, a festival to honor Saturn, the deity, not the planet.

There are 14 days remaining in 2016.

There are 7 days until Christmas.


Events

497 BC – The first Saturnalia festival was celebrated in ancient Rome.

1398 – Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud's armies in Delhi are defeated by Timur.

1790 – Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone.

1835 – The second Great Fire of New York destroys 50 acres (200,000 square meters) of New York City's Financial District.

1837 – A fire in the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg kills 30 guards.

1862 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky, in attempt to control the black market in southern cotton.

1865 – First performance of the Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert.

1892 – First issue of Vogue is published.

1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1935 – First flight of the Douglas DC-3.

1938 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.

1944 – World War II: Battle of the Bulge: Malmedy massacre: American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWs are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Joachim Peiper.

1947 – First flight of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet strategic bomber.

1957 – The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1961 – Niterói circus fire: Fire breaks out during a performance by the Gran Circus Norte-Americano in the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing more than 500.

1967 – Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming near Portsea, Victoria, and is presumed drowned.

1969 – Project Blue Book: The United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs.

1982 - Karen Carpenter made her last live appearance with The Carpenters when she performed in Sherman, California. She died at the age of 32 the following February, form complications of anorexia nervosa.

1983 – Provisional IRA members detonate a car bomb at Harrods Department Store in London. Three police officers and three civilians are killed.

2003 – SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first powered and first supersonic flight.

2004 - Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie Presley agreed to sell 85% of his estate to businessman Robert Sillerman in a deal worth $100m. Sillerman would run Presley's Memphis home Graceland, and own Elvis' name and the rights to all revenue from his music and films. In the deal Lisa Marie would retain possession of Graceland and many of her father's ‘personal effects.’

2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations after severing them in 1960.

Births

1894 – Arthur Fiedler♪ ♫; 1913 – Burt Baskin (Baskin-Robbins); 1920 – Kenneth E. Iverson (developed the APL programming language); 1929 – William Safire; 1930 – Bob Guccione (Penthouse magazine); 1930 – Armin Mueller-Stahl; 1931 – Dave Madden (that guy who was in that thing, manager on The Partridge Family); 1936 – Tommy Steele♪ ♫; 1937 – Art Neville♪ ♫(The Neville Bros); 1939 – Eddie Kendricks♪ ♫(The Temptations); 1942 – Paul Butterfield♪♫(harmonica player); 1944 – Bernard Hill ('King Théoden' in The Lord of the Rings movies); 1945 – Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters, The Cowboy Way); 1946 – Eugene Levy (American Pie movies, A Mighty Wind); 1947 – Wes Studi (Dances With Wolves, 'Magua' in The Last Of The Mohicans); 1949 – Paul Rodgers♪ ♫(Free, Bad Company, The Firm); 1953 – Barry Livingston (My Three Sons); 1953 – Bill Pullman; 1956 – Peter Farrelly (older of the Farrelly Bros); 1958 – Mike Mills:bass:(R.E.M.); 1962 – Rocco Mediate; 1966 – Tracy Byrd♪ ♫; 1969 – Chuck Liddell (mixed martial artist); 1974 – Giovanni Ribisi (A Million Ways to Die in the West); 1974 – Marissa Ribisi (the redhead in Dazed & Confused); 1975 – Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil); 1978 – Manny Pacquiao:boxers:; 1980 – Ryan Hunter-Reay:driving:

Deaths

1830 – Simón Bolívar; 1956 – Eddie Acuff (the postman in the Blondie movie series); 1962 – Thomas Mitchell ('Scarlett's' father in Gone With The Wind, 'Uncle Billy' in It's A Wonderful Life); 1967 – Harold Holt; 1987 – Linda Wong (porn actress); 1992 – Dana Andrews; 1999 – Rex Allen♪ ♫; 1999 – Grover Washington, Jr.♪ ♫; 2009 – Jennifer Jones (The Song of Bernadette); 2009 – Dan O'Bannon (wrote screenplay for Alien); 2009 – Alaina Reed Hall ('Olivia' on Sesame Street); 2010 – Captain Beefheart♪ ♫; 2011 – Kim Jong-il (Dear Leader)

A lot of first flights on this day in history. Almost like they did it on purpose.

December 18

Today is International Migrant's Day, appointed by the U.N. General Assembly, highlighting the human rights of migrant workers.

There are 13 days remaining in 2016.

There are 6 days until Christmas.


Events

218 BC – Second Punic War: Battle of the Trebia – Hannibal's Carthaginian forces defeat those of the Roman Republic.

1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China.

1655 – The Whitehall Conference ends with the determination that there was no law preventing Jews from re-entering England after the Edict of Expulsion of 1290.

1777 – The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by the American rebels over British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October.

1865 – US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the USA.

1892 – Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1898 – Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the first officially recognized land speed record of 39.245 mph (63.159 km/h) in a Jeantaud electric car.

1916 – World War I: The Battle of Verdun ends when German forces under Chief of staff Erich von Falkenhayn are defeated by the French, and suffer 337,000 casualties.

1917 – The resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress. [There was hardly any rejoicing.]

1932 – The Chicago Bears (Da Bears!)defeat the Portsmouth Spartans in the first NFL Championship Game.

1944 – World War II: Seventy-seven B-29 Superfortress and 200 other aircraft of U.S. Fourteenth Air Force bomb Hankow, China, a Japanese supply base.

1966 - Tara Browne was killed when driving at high speed in his Lotus Elan after it collided with a parked lorry in South Kensington, London. His death is referred to in The Beatles song "A Day In The Life".

1981 – First flight of the Russian heavy strategic bomber Tupolev Tu-160, the world's largest combat aircraft, largest supersonic aircraft and largest variable-sweep wing aircraft built.

2006 – United Arab Emirates holds its first-ever elections.

2015 – Kellingley Colliery, the last deep coal mine in Great Britain, closes.

Births

1863 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria; 1878 – Joseph Stalin; 1879 – Paul Klee:artist:; 1886 – Ty Cobb; 1910 – Abe Burrows; 1912 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.; 1913 – Willy Brandt; 1916 – Betty Grable; 1917 – Ossie Davis (Evening Shade, Do The Right Thing, directed Cotton Comes To Harlem; 1924 – Cicely Tyson; 1932 – Roger Smith (77 Sunset Strip, Mister Roberts); 1938 – Chas Chandler:bass:(The Animals); 1941 – Sam Andrew♪ ♫(Big Brother and the Holding Company); 1943 – Bobby Keys♪ ♫(sax for The Rolling Stones, Delaney & Bonnie, et al); 1943 – Keith Richards:shred:(The Rolling Stones); 1946 – Steve Biko (South African anti-apartheid activist); 1946 – $teven Fucking $pielberg; 1949 – David A. Johnston (American volcnologist, died on Mt. St. Helens); 1950 – Randy Castillo:drummer:(Ozzy, Mötley Crüe); 1953 – Elliot Easton:shred:(The Cars); 1954 – Ray Liotta (Good Fellas); 1963 – Brad Pitt; 1964 – Stone Cold Steve Austin; 1968 – Rachel Griffiths; 1968 – Casper Van Dien; 1970 – DMX♪ ♫; 1978 – Katie Holmes; 1980 – Christina Aguilera♪ ♫

Deaths

1737 – Antonio Stradivari♪ ♫(musical instrument maker); 1971 – Bobby Jones; 1990 – Anne Revere (The Song of Bernadette, A Place in the Sun); 1992 – Mark Goodson ("This has been a Mark Goodson television production."); 1993 – Sam Wanamaker; 1997 – Chris Farley (SNL, Tommy Boy); 2006 – Joseph Barbera (of Hanna-Barbera animation studios); 2008 – Majel Barrett ('Nurse Chapel' on Star Trek TOS, 'Lwaxana Troi' on Star Trek:TNG); 2008 – Mark Felt (former FBI director, Woodward & Bernstein's "Deep Throat"); 2011 – Václav Havel

December 19....:banghead:

1154 – Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1606 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who founded, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.

1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled "The American Crisis".

1777 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington's Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

1907 – Two hundred thirty-nine coal miners die in the Darr Mine Disaster in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.

1912 – William Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over one thousand people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.

1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

1932 – BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service.

1956 – Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

1967 – Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, is officially presumed dead.

1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.

1981 – Sixteen lives are lost when the Penlee lifeboat goes to the aid of the stricken coaster Union Star in heavy seas.

1998 – President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached.

2001 – A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl, Mongolia.

2013 – Spacecraft Gaia is launched by European Space Agency.

2016 – Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated while at an art exhibition in Ankara. The accused assassin, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, is shot and killed by Turkish guards. Just hours later, a vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills and injures multiple people.

2016 – More than 270 electors of the Electoral College vote for Donald Trump, confirming his status as President-elect of the United States, marking only the fifth time in US history that the winner of the popular vote did not win the general election.

Births

1899 – Martin Luther King, Sr.; 1906 – Leonid Brezhnev; 1915 – Édith Piaf; 1920 – Little Jimmy Dickens; 1940 – Phil Ochs; 1942 – "Mean Gene" Okerlund; 1944 – Alvin Lee; 1944 – Tim Reid; 1945 – Elaine Joyce; 1945 – John McEuen; 1946 – Robert Urich; 1956 – Phil Harris; 1961 – Reggie White; 1963 – Jennifer Beals; 1967 – Criss Angel; 1970 – Tyson Beckford; 1972 – Alyssa Milano; 1972 – Warren Sapp; 1980 – Jake Gyllenhaal

Deaths

1848 – Emily Brontë; 1915 – Alois Alzheimer; 1986 – V. C. Andrews; 1997 – Jimmy Rogers; 1998 – Mel Fisher; 2003 – Hope Lange; 2005 – Vincent Gigante; 2008 – Dock Ellis

December 20

There are 11 days remaining in 2016, and this year can not end fast enough.

There are 4 days until Christmas.


Events

69 – Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of Emperor.

1192 – Richard I of England is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after the Third Crusade.

1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.

1915 – World War I: The last Australian troops are evacuated from Gallipoli.

1941 – World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.

1946 – The popular Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life is first released in New York City.

1951 – The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four 200 watt light bulbs.

1957 – The initial production version of the Boeing 707 makes its first flight.

1968 – The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.

1984 – The Summit Tunnel fire is the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million liters of gasoline derails near the town of Todmorden, England, in the Pennines.

1987 – In the worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).

1989 – The United States invasion of Panama deposes Manuel Noriega.

1995 – NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia.

2004 – A gang of thieves steal £26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, one of the largest bank robberies in British history.

2007 – Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.

Births

1868 – Harvey Samuel Firestone; 1898 – Irene Dunne; 1901 – Robert J. Van de Graaff; 1908 – Dennis Morgan; 1927 – Charlie Callas; 1945 – Peter Criss; 1946 – Uri Geller; 1946 – Dick Wolf; 1948 – Alan Parsons; 1954 – Michael Badalucco; 1957 – Billy Bragg; 1961 – Freddie Spencer; 1966 – Chris Robinson; 1983 – Jonah Hill

Deaths

1812 – Sacagawea; 1961 – Moss Hart; 1968 – John Steinbeck; 1973 – Bobby Darin; 1976 – Richard J. Daley; 1994 – Dean Rusk; 1995 – Madge Sinclair; 1996 – Carl Sagan; 1999 – Hank Snow; 2009 – Brittany Murphy

December 21

Today is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, with the shortest day and longest night of the year. Those of us in the Southern Hemisphere get their Summer Solstice.

Today, the Heathenry (and other forms of Neopaganism) begin celebrating Yule.

Blue Christmas (or Longest Night) is a day in Western Christianity's Advent season marking the longest night of the year (Winter Solstice).

Plymouth, Massachusetts celebrates Forefathers' Day today. It is a commemoration of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in Plymouth, on December 21, 1620.

There are 10 days remaining in 2016.

There are 3 days until Christmas. If haven't finished your shopping yet, you better be finding another gear.:yesnod:


Events

69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian emperor of Rome, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors.

1620 – Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

1826 – American settlers in Nacogdoches, Mexican Texas, declare their independence, starting the Fredonian Rebellion.

1872 – Challenger expedition: HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sails from Portsmouth, England.

1879 – World premiere of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1910 – An underground explosion at the Hulton Bank Colliery No. 3 Pit in Over Hulton, Westhoughton, England, kills 344 miners.

1913 – Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.

1936 – First flight of the Junkers Ju 88 multi-role combat aircraft.

1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.

1946 – An 8.1 Mw earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Nankaidō, Japan, kills over 1,300 people and destroys over 38,000 homes.

1967 – Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, having lived for 18 days after the transplant.

1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.

1970 – First flight of F-14 Tomcat multi-role combat aircraft.

1970 - A stretch limousine carrying Elvis Presley pulled up outside the White House in Washington, D.C. The driver handed over a letter from Elvis addressed to President Nixon requesting a meeting to discuss how the King of Rock and Roll could help Nixon fight drugs. The President agreed to give Presley a Narcotics Bureau badge - but only after learning that the chief of the narcotics bureau had turned down the same request earlier that day and told Presley the only person who could overrule his decision was the President. At Elvis' request, the meeting remained secret for more than a year, until the Washington Post broke the story on January 27th, 1972.

1988 – A bomb explodes on board Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

1995 – The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.

2012 - 'Gangnam Style' by South Korean musician Psy became the first YouTube video to reach a billion views.

Births

1795 – Jack Russell (Jack Russell Terrier); 1804 – Benjamin Disraeli; 1915 – Werner von Trapp♪ ♫(of the The Sound Of Music vonn Trapps); 1918 – Donald Regan; 1918 – Kurt Waldheim; 1922 – Paul Winchell; 1926 – Freddie Hart♪ ♫; 1926 – Joe Paterno; 1935 – Phil Donahue; 1937 – Jane Fonda; 1940 – Frank Zappa:shred:(The Mothers Of Invention); 1943 – Albert Lee:shred:; 1946 – Carl Wilson:shred:(The Beach Boys, younger brother of Dennis & Brian); 1948 – Samuel L. Jackson:devil:; 1950 – Jeffrey Katzenberg (co-founded Dreamworks); 1951 – Nick Gilder♪ ♫(sang "Hot Child In The City"); 1954 – Chris Evert; 1955 – Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm In The Middle); 1957 – Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond); 1959 – Florence Griffith Joyner "FloJo":bolt:; 1965 – Andy Dick; 1966 – Kiefer Sutherland; 1969 – Julie Delpy; 1974 – Karrie Webb

Deaths

72 – Thomas the Apostle; 1937 – Ted Healy (created The Three Stooges); 1940 – F. Scott Fitzgerald; 1945 – George S. Patton; 1974 – Richard Long (The Big Valley); 1990 – Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson:devil:(designed the Lockheed U-2 and Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, and many others); 1992 – Stella Adler; 1992 – Albert King:shred:; 2014 – Billie Whitelaw:love:(the nanny in The Omen)

December 22

There are 9 days remaining in 2016.

There are 2 days until Christmas. Whaddya mean ya didn't get batteries?!?!:bitching:


Events

856 – Damghan earthquake: An earthquake near the Persian city of Damghan kills an estimated 200,000 people, the sixth deadliest earthquake in recorded history.

1807 – The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.

1808 – Ludwig van Beethoven conducts and performs in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) and Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano).

1864 – Savannah, Georgia falls to the forces of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

1891 – Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered using photography.

1894 – The Dreyfus affair begins in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason.

1937 – The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.

1944 – World War II: Battle of the Bulge: German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium, prompting the famous one word reply by General Anthony McAuliffe: "Nuts!"

1964 – The first test flight of the SR-71 (Blackbird) took place at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.

1965 – In the United Kingdom, a 70 mph speed limit is applied to all rural roads including motorways for the first time.

1974 – The house of former British Prime Minister Edward Heath is attacked by members of the Provisional IRA.

1984 – Bernhard Goetz shoots four would-be muggers on an express train in Manhattan section of New York, New York.

1987 - Nikki Sixx from Mötley Crüe was pronounced 'dead on arrival' in an ambulance when his heart stopped beating for two minutes. Sixx was given two shots of adrenaline in his chest to revive him. Fellow band members were prematurely informed of his death.

1989 – Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

1990 – Lech Wałęsa is elected President of Poland.

2001 – Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.

2002, Former Clash singer and guitarist Joe Strummer (John Graham Mellor) died of a suspected heart attack aged 50.

2008 – An ash dike ruptured at a solid waste containment area in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion US gallons (4,200,000 m3) of coal fly ash slurry.

2010 – The repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, is signed into law by President Barack Obama.

2014 - Joe Cocker died of lung cancer in Crawford, Colorado aged 70. The Sheffield-born singer had a career lasting more than 40 years.

Births

244 – Diocletian; 1858 – Giacomo Puccini♪ ♫; 1912 – Lady Bird Johnson (38th FLOTUS); 1915 – Barbara Billingsley (Leave It To Beaver); 1917 – Gene Rayburn (Match Game); 1921 – Hawkshaw Hawkins:shred:; 1922 – Ruth Roman (Strangers on a Train); 1934 – David Pearson:driving:; 1936 – Héctor Elizondo; 1937 – Charlotte Lamb; 1943 – Paul Wolfowitz; 1944 – Barry Jenkins:drummer:(The Animals); 1945 – Diane Sawyer; 1948 – Rick Nielsen:shred:(Cheap Trick); 1948 – Lynne Thigpen; 1949 – Robin & Maurice Gibb♪ ♫(The Bee Gees); Luke Skywalker aka Luther Campbell♪ ♫(2 Live Crew); 1961 – Andrew Fastow; 1961 – Yuri Malenchenko (Russian cosmonaut, 1st person to marry in while in space); 1962 – Ralph Fiennes; 1968 – Dina Meyer; 1970 – Ted Cruz; 1972 – Vanessa Paradis♪ ♫; 1989 – Jordin Sparks♪ ♫; 1993 – Meghan Trainor♪ ♫

Deaths

1880 – George Eliot (author Adam Bede, Silas Marner); 1939 – Ma Rainey♪ ♫; 1943 – Beatrix Potter (author The Tale of Peter Rabbit); 1979 – Darryl F. Zanuck; 1989 – Samuel Beckett (author Waiting for Godot); 1993 – Don DeFore (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet); 1995 – Butterfly McQueen (Gone With The Wind); 2002 – Joe Strummer aka John Graham Mellor♪ ♫(The Clash); 2014 – Christine Cavanaugh (voice actress Babe, RugRats, Darkwing Duck, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters); 2014 – Joe Cocker♪ ♫

December 23

484 – Huneric dies and is succeeded by his nephew Gunthamund, who becomes king of the Vandals. During his reign Christians are protected from persecution.

562 – Hagia Sophia in Constantinople reopened with a rebuilt dome after a series of earthquakes caused the original to collapse.

1688 – As part of the Glorious Revolution, King James II of England flees from England to Paris, France after being deposed in favor of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.

1688 – As part of the Glorious Revolution, King James II of England flees from England to Paris, France after being deposed in favor of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.

1783 – George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

1893 – The opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed.

1913 – The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.

1919 – Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 becomes law in the United Kingdom.

1941 – World War II: After 15 days of fighting, the Imperial Japanese Army occupies Wake Island.

1947 – The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1954 – First successful kidney transplant is performed by J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray.

1968 – The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after eleven months of internment in North Korea.

1970 – The North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York, New York is topped out at 1,368 feet (417 m), making it the tallest building in the world.

1972 – The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days, having reportedly survived by cannibalism.

1986 – Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.

2002 – A U.S. MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 in the first combat engagement between a drone and conventional aircraft.

Births

1805 – Joseph Smith; 1867 – Madam C. J. Walker; 1911 – James Gregory; 1918 – Helmut Schmidt; 1935 – Paul Hornung; 1943 – Harry Shearer; 1944 – Wesley Clark; 1945 – Ron Bushy; 1946 – Susan Lucci; 1949 – Reinhold Weege; 1956 – Dave Murray; 1958 – Joan Severance; 1964 – Eddie Vedder; 1967 – Carla Bruni; 1969 – Greg Biffle

Deaths

679 – Dagobert II; 1884 – John Chisum; 1939 – Anthony Fokker; 1972 – Andrei Tupolev; 1973 – Charles Atlas; 1979 – Peggy Guggenheim; 1982 – Jack Webb; 2000 – Billy Barty; 2000 – Victor Borge

December24

Today is Christmas Eve.

Christmas is tomorrow. If you're not finished shopping, YOU are fucked.

There are 7 days remaining in 2016.


Events

1777 – Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook.

1800 – The Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise fails to kill Napoleon Bonaparte.

1814 – Representatives of Britain and the United States sign the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

1826 – The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY begins that night, wrapping up the following morning.

1851 – Library of Congress burns.

1865 – The Ku Klux Klan is formed.

1871 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida opens in Cairo, Egypt.

1914 – World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins.

1943 – World War II: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Supreme Allied Commander for the Invasion of Normandy.

1945 – Five of nine children go missing after their home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, is burned down. <--Strange story.

1968 – Astronaut William Anders of the NASA Apollo 8 mission, the first manned voyage to orbit the Moon, took the famous photograph known as "Earthrise", showing the Earth rising above the lunar surface.

1969 – The oil company Phillips Petroleum made the first oil discovery in the Norwegian sector of North Sea.

1973 – District of Columbia Home Rule Act is passed, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to elect their own local government.

1973 - Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers was arrested in Visalia, California and charged with possession of marijuana. His court date is set for January 10th, the same day the band's new LP is to be released. The album is ironically titled "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits".

1974 – Cyclone Tracy strikes Darwin, Australia, destroying more than 70% of the city.

1980 – Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge, in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom, an incident called "Britain's Roswell".

Births

1166 – John, King of England; 1809 – Kit Carson; 1905 – Howard Hughe$; 1922 – Ava Gardner; 1927 – Mary Higgins Clark; 1930 – Robert Joffrey; 1945 – Lemmy Kilmister♪ ♫:bass:(Motörhead); 1953 – Timothy Carhart; 1955 – Clarence Gilyard (Matlock, Walker Texas Ranger); 1961 – Mary Barra (CEO and chairwoman of the General Motors Company); 1962 – Darren Wharton:keys:(Thin Lizzy); 1964 – Mark Valley (Boston Legal, Fringe, Human Target); 1965 – Millard Powers:bass:(Counting Crows); 1966 – Diedrich Bader (The Drew Carey Show, Office Space); 1968 – Doyle Bramhall II:shred:; 1971 – Ricky Martin♪ ♫; 1974 – Ryan Seacrest (white guy); 1974 – J.D. Walsh (a different white guy); 1985 – David Ragan:driving:

Deaths

1524 – Vasco da Gama; 1863 – William Makepeace Thackeray; 1873 – Johns Hopkins; 1914 – John Muir (founded Sierra Club); 1931 – Flying Hawk (Oglala Lakota chief); 1967 – Burt Baskin (Baskin-Robbins); 1980 – Karl Dönitz; 1984 – Peter Lawford; 1992 – Peyo (created The Smurfs); 1992 – Bobby LaKind:drummer:(The Doobie Bros); 1993 – Norman Vincent Peale; 1997 – Toshiro Mifune; 1999 – Bill Bowerman (co-founded Nike, Inc.); 2009 – George Michael (host of The George Michael Sports Machine); 2012 – Charles Durning; 2012 – Jack Klugman (Quincy M.E., The Odd Couple); 2015 – William Guest♪ ♫(one of Gladys Knight's Pips)

December 25

Today is Christmas Day, a Christian holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

There are 6 days remaining in 2016.


Events

333 – Roman Emperor Constantine the Great elevates his youngest son, Constans, to the rank of Caesar.

336 – First documentary sign of Christmas celebration in Rome.

597 – Augustine of Canterbury and his fellow-labourers baptise, in Kent, more than 10,000 Anglo-Saxons.

800 – The Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.

1000 – The foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary: Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.

1025 – Coronation of Mieszko II Lambert as king of Poland.

1066 – William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, is crowned king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1076 – Coronation of Bolesław II the Generous as king of Poland.

1100 – Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

1130 – Count Roger II of Sicily is crowned the first king of Sicily.

1492 – The carrack Santa María, commanded by Christopher Columbus, runs onto a reef off the Haitian coast due to an improper watch.

1776 – George Washington and the Continental Army cross the Delaware River at night to attack Hessian forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.

1815 – The Handel and Haydn Society, oldest continually performing arts organization in the United States, gives its first performance.

1826 – The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy concludes after beginning the previous evening.

1837 – Second Seminole War: American general Zachary Taylor leads 1100 troops against the Seminoles at the Battle of Lake Okeechobee.

1868 – United States President Andrew Johnson grants an unconditional pardon to all Confederate veterans.

1914 – A series of unofficial truces occur across the Western Front to celebrate Christmas.

1941 – Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

1950 – The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951.

1954 - Johnny Ace shot himself dead backstage at the City Auditorium in Houston, Texas. The R&B singer was playing with a revolver during a break between sets, someone in the room said "Be careful with that thing’’ and he said ‘It’s OK the gun’s not loaded, see’’ and pointed it at himself with a smile on his face. He was 25.

1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans-Earth injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day).

1991 – Ukraine's referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.

2003 – The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express spacecraft on December 19, stops transmitting shortly before its scheduled landing.

2004 – The Cassini orbiter releases the Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.

2006 - James Brown the ‘Godfather of Soul’, died at the age of 73 after being diagnosed with severe pneumonia. Brown went to his dentist in Atlanta the previous day who told him something was wrong, and sent him to a doctor immediately.

Births

1642 (OS) – Isaac Newton; 1821 – Clara Barton (founded the American Red Cross); 1878 – Louis Chevrolet (yeah, that one); 1886 – Kid Ory♪ ♫; 1887 – Conrad Hilton (Hilton Hotels & Resorts); 1889 – Lila Bell Wallace (co-founded Readers' Digest); 1890 – Robert Ripley (believe it, or not); 1899 – Humphrey Bogart; 1907 – Cab Calloway♪ ♫; 1907 – Mike Mazurki; 1909 – Zora Arkus-Duntov (considered The Father of the Corvette); 1913 – Tony Martin♪ ♫; 1918 – Anwar Sadat; 1924 – Rod Serling (hosted The Twilight Zone); 1937 – O'Kelly Isley Jr.♪ ♫(Isley Bros); 1939 – Bob James♪ ♫(wrote theme song for tv series Taxi); 1940 – Pete Brown♪ ♫; 1945 – Noel Redding:bass:(The Jimi Hendrix Experience); 1945 – Ken Stabler; 1946 – Jimmy Buffett♪ ♫:devil); 1946 – Larry Csonka; 1948 – Barbara Mandrell; 1949 – Sissy Spacek; 1950 – Karl Rove; 1952 – C. C. H. Pounder (NCIS: New Orleans); 1954 – Annie Lennox♪ ♫(The Eurythmics); 1954 – Steve Wariner♪ ♫; 1958 – Rickey 'The Man of Steal' Henderson (holds MLB records for most stolen bases, runs, unintentional walks, & lead off home runs); 1958 – Alannah Myles♪ ♫(sang "Black Velvet"); 1971 – Dido♪ ♫; 1971 – Justin Trudeau

Deaths

1635 – Samuel de Champlain (namesake of Lake Champlain); 1946 – W. C. Fields; 1957 – Charles Pathé (Pathé records); 1977 – Charlie Chaplin; 1979 – Joan Blondell; 1989 – Benny Binion (Binion's Horseshoe Casino); 1989 – Nicolae & Elena Ceaușescu; 1989 – Billy Martin; 1997 – Denver Pyle ('Uncle Jesse' on The Dukes of Hazzard); 2006 – James Brown 'The Godfather of Soul'♪ ♫; 2008 – Eartha Kitt♪ ♫; 2009 – Vic Chesnutt♪ ♫; 2015 – George Clayton Johnson (co-wrote the novel Logan's Run, wrote scripts for The Twilight Zone, wrote script for the first televised episode (The Man Trap)of Star Trek TOS, wrote the story that became Ocean's Eleven)


Merry Christmas Urrbody!!!!

December 26

Today our friends in the UK celebrate Boxing Day.

Ireland and the Isle of Man celebrate Wren Day. <--Interesting read.

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa.

Fencing Texans in Houston mark today as Mauro Hamza Day.

There are 5 days remaining in 2016.


Events

1776 – American Revolutionary War: In the Battle of Trenton, having crossed the Delaware River during the previous night, George Washington and the Continental Army attack and successfully defeat a garrison of Hessian forces.

1799 – Four thousand people attend George Washington's funeral where Henry Lee III declares him as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen".

1862 – Four nuns serving as volunteer nurses on board USS Red Rover are the first female nurses on a U.S. Navy hospital ship.

1862 – The largest mass-hanging in U.S. history took place in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Dakota warriors died.

1871 – Gilbert and Sullivan collaborate for the first time, on their lost opera, Thespis. It does modestly well, but the two would not collaborate again for four years.

1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.

1919 – Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox is sold to the New York Yankees by owner Harry Frazee, allegedly establishing the Curse of the Bambino superstition.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

1944 – World War II: George S. Patton's Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium.

1963 – The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" are released in the United States, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.

1965 - While spending Christmas at his father's home in Cheshire, Paul McCartney crashed the moped he was riding and suffered a five-inch cut to his mouth.

1966 - Jimi Hendrix plays an afternoon show at The Uppercut Club in London, and pens the lyrics to 'Purple Haze' in the dressing room.

1966 – The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

1972 – Vietnam War: As part of Operation Linebacker II, 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.

1975 – Tu-144, the world's first commercial supersonic aircraft, surpassing Mach 2, went into service.

1979 - Pink Floyd’s The Wall was at No.1 on the US album chart. (The album spent a total of 15 weeks at No.1 during a 35-week stay on the chart). The Wall also spent a total of 5 weeks at No.1 on the UK chart.

1981 - AC/DC started a three-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'For Those About To Rock We Salute You' the follow-up to their highly successful album 'Back In Black'. The name of the album was inspired by a book Angus Young read, entitled 'For Those About to Die, We Salute You', about Roman gladiators.

2003 – The 6.6 Mw Bam earthquake shakes southeastern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving more than 26,000 dead and 30,000 injured.

2004 – The 9.1–9.3 Mw Indian Ocean earthquake shakes northern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). One of the largest observed tsunamis follows, affecting the coastal areas of Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia; death toll is between 230,000–280,000.

2006 – An oil pipeline in Lagos, Nigeria explodes, killing at least 260 people.

2012 - Fontella Bass, who had the 1965 U.S. No.4 and UK No.11 single 'Rescue Me' died of complications following a heart attack aged 72.

Births

1791 – Charles Babbage (invented the Difference engine); 1863 – Charles Pathé (co-founded Pathé Records); 1891 – Henry Miller (author Tropic of Cancer & Tropic of Capricorn); 1903 – Elisha Cook, Jr.; 1907 – Albert Gore, Sr.; 1914 – Richard Widmark; 1921 – Steve Allen; 1927 – Alan King; 1930 – Donald Moffat (that guy who was in that thing); 1935 - Abdul 'Duke' Fakir♪ ♫(The Four Tops); 1939 – Phil Spector♪ ♫; 1942 – Catherine Coulter; 1942 – Gray Davis; 1945 – John Walsh (created America's Most Wanted); 1949 – Bob Hartman♪ ♫(Petra); 1961 – John Lynch; 1963 – Lars Ulrich:drummer:(Metallica); 1966 – Jay Farrar♪ ♫(Uncle Tupelo); 1970 – James Mercer♪ ♫(The Shins); 1971 – Jared Leto♪ ♫(Thirty Seconds To Mars); 1979 – Chris Daughtry♪ ♫(Daughtry); 1985 – Beth Behrs (2 Broke Girls); 1986 – Kit Harington (Game Of Thrones); 1991 – Eden Sher ('Sue' on The Middle)

Deaths

1909 – Frederic Remington:artist:; 1931 – Melvil Dewey (created the Dewey Decimal Classification); 1963 – Gorgeous George; 1972 – Harry S Truman (33rd POTUS); 1974 – Jack Benny; 1977 – Howard Hawks; 1986 – Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein); 1996 – JonBenét Ramsey; 1999 – Curtis Mayfield♪ ♫; 2000 – Jason Robards (The Night They Raided Minsky's, Once Upon a Time in the West); 2004 – Reggie White; 2005 – Vincent Schiavelli; 2006 – Gerald Ford (40th VPOTUS, 38th POTUS); 2010 – Teena Marie♪ ♫; 2012 - Fontella Bass♪ ♫

December 27

There are 4 days remaining in 2016.


Events

537 – The Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople, is completed.

1521 – The Zwickau prophets arrive in Wittenberg disturbing the peace and preaching the Apocalypse. Philip Melanchthon cannot silence them. Martin Luther is being held in protective custody at the Wartburg castle at this time. He is later released and is able, by his preaching, to regain the peace.

1814 – War of 1812: The American schooner USS Carolina is destroyed. It was the last of Commodore Daniel Patterson's makeshift fleet that fought a series of delaying actions that contributed to Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

1831 – Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution.

1845 – Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.

1922 – Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō becomes the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned in the world.

1927 – Show Boat, considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway.

1932 – Radio City Music Hall, "Showplace of the Nation", opens in New York City.

1966 – The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, is "discovered" in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

1979 – The Soviet Union invades the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

1997 – Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

2004 – Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet. SGR 1806-20's magnetic field is 1-2 quadrillion times stronger than Earth's. It is the most highly magnetized object ever observed.

Births

1571 – Johannes Kepler; 1822 – Louis Pasteur ("Nevermind that shit, here comes Mongo!"); 1879 – Sydney Greenstreet; 1901 – Marlene Dietrich; 1915 – William Masters (of Masters and Johnson); 1931 – Scotty Moore♪ ♫; 1939 – John Amos; 1943 – Cokie Roberts; 1944 – Mick Jones; 1948 – Gérard Depardieu; 1950 – Terry Bozzio; 1952 – David Knopfler; 1957 – Greg Mortenson; 1960 – Maryam d'Abo; 1966 – Bill Goldberg; 1970 – Chyna; 1975 – Heather O'Rourke

Deaths

1834 – Charles Lamb; 1836 – Stephen F. Austin; 1923 – Gustave Eiffel; 1958 – Harry Warner; 1981 – Hoagy Carmichael; 1997 – Billy Wright; 2007 – Benazir Bhutto; 2012 – Harry Carey, Jr.; 2012 – Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.; 2015 – Meadowlark Lemon

A quadrillion is a *lot*

December 28

There are 3 days remaining in 2016.


Events

1065 – Westminster Abbey is consecrated.

1795 – Construction of Yonge Street, formerly recognized as the longest street in the world, begins in York, Upper Canada (present-day Toronto).

1832 – John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.

1835 – Osceola leads his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the United States Army.

1836 – South Australia and Adelaide are founded.

1846 – Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1867 – United States claims Midway Atoll, the first territory annexed outside Continental limits.

1879 – Tay Bridge disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom collapses as a train passes over it, killing 75.

1895 – The Lumière brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines.

1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays.

1908 – The 7.1 Mw Messina earthquake shakes Southern Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), killing between 75,000 and 200,000.

1912 – The first municipally owned streetcars take to the streets in San Francisco.

1918 – Constance Markievicz, while detained in Holloway prison, became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons.

1948 – The DC-3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami.

1958 – "Greatest Game Ever Played": Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the first ever National Football League sudden death overtime game at New York's Yankee Stadium.

1972 – Kim Il-sung, already Prime Minister of North Korea and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, becomes the first President of North Korea.

1973 – The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States.

2010 – Arab Spring: Popular protests begin in Algeria against the government.

2015 - Lemmy, lead vocalist and bassist with Motörhead, died at his home in Los Angeles, California, four days after his 70th birthday following a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer. Lemmy played in several rock groups in the 1960s, including the Rockin' Vickers and worked as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and The Nice, before joining the space rock band Hawkwind in 1971, singing lead on their hit 'Silver Machine'.

Births

1763 – John Molson (Molson Brewery); 1856 – Woodrow Wilson (28th POTUS); 1903 – Earl Hines:keys:; 1908 – Lew Ayres; 1914 – 'Pops' Roebuck Staples♪ ♫(The Staple Singers); 1922 – Stan Lee; 1931 – Martin Milner (Route 66, Adam-12); 1932 – Nichelle Nichols ('Uhura' on Star Trek TOS); 1933 – John Y. Brown Jr.; 1934 – Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Downton Abbey, Harry Potter movies); 1938 - Charles Neville♪ ♫(The Neville Bros); 1946 – Mike Beebe; 1946 – Edgar Winter♪ ♫:keys:; 1953 - Richard Clayderman:keys:; 1953 – Martha Wash♪ ♫(The Weather Girls); 1954 – Gayle King; 1954 – Denzel Washington; 1960 – Melvin Turpin (with Sam Bowie, one of University Of Kentucky basketball's 'Twin Towers'); 1969 – Linus Torvalds (developed Linux kernel); 1970 – Elaine Hendrix:love:; 1973 – Seth Meyers; 1978 – John Legend:keys:; 1981 – Sienna Miller

Deaths

1734 – Rob Roy MacGregor; 1937 – Maurice Ravel♪ ♫; 1983 – William Demarest ('Uncle Charley' on My Three Sons); 1983 – Dennis Wilson:drummer:(The Beach Boys); 1984 – Sam Peckinpah; 1999 – Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger); 2004 – Jerry Orbach (Law & Order); 2004 – Susan Sontag; 2012 – Mark Crispin (designed the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol); 2015 – Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister:bass::devil:(Motörhead)

December 29

There are 2 days remaining in 2016.


Events

875 – Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, is crowned as Holy Roman Emperor Charles II.

1170 – Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: Three thousand British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia.

1835 – The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

1845 – In accordance with International Boundary delimitation, the United States annexes the Republic of Texas, following the manifest destiny doctrine. The Republic of Texas, which had been independent since the Texas Revolution of 1836, is thereupon admitted as the 28th U.S. state.

1851 – The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.

1876 – The Ashtabula River railroad disaster occurs, leaving 64 injured and 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio.

1890 – Wounded Knee Massacre occurs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. 300 Lakota, including 65 women and 24 children, are killed by the United States 7th Cavalry Regiment.

1916 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel by James Joyce, was first published as a book by American publishing house B. W. Huebschis after it had been serialized in The Egoist (1914–15).

1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.

1949 – KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

1989 – Czech writer, philosopher and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.

1997 – Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's 1.25 million chickens to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.

1998 – Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over one million lives.

2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

Births

1766 – Charles Macintosh (inventor of waterproof fabric); 1800 – Charles Goodyear (developed vulcanized rubber); 1808 – Andrew Johnson (17th POTUS); 1876 – Pablo Casals♪ ♫; 1879 – Billy Mitchell; 1881 – Jess Willard:boxers:; 1911 – Klaus Fuchs; 1915 – Robert Ruark (adventurer and big game hunter); 1915 – Jo Van Fleet (East of Eden, Cool Hand Luke); 1920 – Viveca Lindfors; 1923 – Dina Merrill; 1929 – Matt 'Guitar' Murphy:shred:; 1932 – Inga Swenson (Benson); 1934 – Ed Flanders ('Ed', not 'Ned', St. Elsewhere); 1936 – Mary Tyler Moore; 1938 – Jon Voight; 1939 – Ed Bruce♪ ♫(Maverick(1981 tv series, co-wrote Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys); 1941 – Ray Thomas♪ ♫(Moody Blues); 1943 – Bill Aucoin (manager/discovered KISS, manager Billy Idol); 1943 – Rick Danko:bass:(The Band); 1946 – Marianne Faithfull♪ ♫; 1947 – Ted Danson; 1947 – Cozy Powell:drummer:(Jeff Beck Group, Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, Emerson, Lake & Powell, et al); 1951 – Yvonne Elliman♪ ♫(sang "If I Can't Have You"); 1953 – Stanley Williams (founder of street gang The Crips); 1959 – Patricia Clarkson; 1959 – Paula Poundstone; 1961 – Jim Reid♪ ♫(The Jesus & Mary Chain); 1967 – Ashleigh Banfield:love:; 1967 – Evan Seinfeld:bass:(Biohazard); 1972 – Jude Law; 1974 – Mekhi Phifer; 1976 – Danny McBride

Deaths

1170 – Thomas Becket; 1929 – Wilhelm Maybach (of the Mercedes tuning Maybachs); 1980 – Tim Hardin♪ ♫; 2012 – Mike Auldridge:shred:(The Seldom Scene)

December 30

There is 1 day remaining in 2016.

Tomorrow, the 366th day of the year, is the last day of 2016.


Events

1066 – Granada massacre: A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.

1702 – Queen Anne's War: James Moore, Governor of the Province of Carolina, abandons the Siege of St. Augustine.

1813 – War of 1812: British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York (all but four buildings are destroyed).

1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis (1816) between the United States and the united Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi Indian tribes is proclaimed.

1825 – The Treaty of St. Louis (1825), between the United States and the Shawnee Nation, is proclaimed.

1853 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

1903 – In the deadliest single-building fire in United States history, the Iroquois Theatre fire claimed over 600 lives in Chicago.

1916 – Russian mystic and advisor to the Tsar, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, was murdered by a loyalist group led by Prince Felix Yusupov. His frozen, partially-trussed body was discovered in a Moscow river three days later.

1919 – Lincoln's Inn in London, England, UK admits its first female bar student.

1922 – The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.

1936 – The United Auto Workers union stages its first sitdown strike.

1962 - Singer Brenda Lee was hurt when she attempted to rescue her poodle, Cee Cee, from her burning house. Cee Cee later died of smoke inhalation.

1965 – Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines.

1999 - George Harrison and his wife Olivia were attacked when an intruder broke into their home, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Olivia beat off the attacker with a poker and heavy lamp. Harrison who was stabbed in the chest was admitted to hospital and treated for a collapsed lung and various minor stab wounds (over 40 stab wounds). His wife, Olivia, was treated for cuts and bruises she had suffered in the struggle with the intruder. Police later arrested Michael Abram from Liverpool who had nursed an irrational obsession with The Beatles.

2002 - Diana Ross was arrested for drunk driving by the Arizona highway patrol after a motorist called to report a swerving vehicle. When asked to walk in a straight line she fell over, could not count to 30, or balance on one foot. Police said the singer was twice over the drunk driving limit with a blood-alcohol level of 0.20, the legal limit is 0.08.

2005 – Tropical Storm Zeta forms in the open Atlantic Ocean, tying the record for the latest tropical cyclone ever to form in the North Atlantic basin.

2006 – The Indonesian passenger ferry MV Senopati Nusantara sinks in a storm, resulting in at least 400 deaths.

2006 – Former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein is executed. And there was much rejoicing.

Births

39 – Titus; 1851 – Asa Griggs Candler (co-founded Coca-Cola Company); 1865 – Rudyard Kipling; 1911 – Jeanette Nolan:love:(The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Big Heat); 1914 – Bert Parks; 1920 – Jack Lord (Hawaii Five-O (original)); 1925 – Ian MacNaughton (director/producer Monty Python); 1928 – Bo Diddley:shred::devil:; 1931 – Skeeter Davis♪ ♫; 1934 – Joseph Bologna; 1934 – Del Shannon♪ ♫; 1935 – Sandy Koufax; 1935 – Jack Riley (The Bob Newhart Show); 1937 – John Hartford:violin:; 1937 – Paul Stookey♪ ♫(Peter, Paul, & Mary); 1939 – Felix Pappalardi:bass:(Mountain); 1942 – Michael Nesmith♪ ♫(The Monkees)[Interesting note: Nesmith wrote the song "Different Drum" which was a hit for The Stone Poneys, with Linda Ronstadt on lead vocals. I did not know that was Ronstadt singing that song.]; 1945 – Davy Jones♪ ♫(The Monkees); 1946 – Clive Bunker:drummer:(Jethro Tull); 1946 – Patti Smith♪ ♫; 1947 – Jeff Lynne:shred:(Electric Light Orchestra); 1953 – Meredith Vieira; 1956 – Suzy Bogguss♪ ♫; 1956 – Sheryl Lee Ralph (The Distinguished Gentleman); 1957 – Matt Lauer; 1959 – Tracey Ullman; 1961 – Sean Hannity; 1961 – Ben Johnson:bolt:; 1965 – Heidi Fleiss; 1975 – Tiger Woods; 1977 – Laila Ali:boxers::love:; 1978 – Tyrese Gibson♪ ♫; 1980 – Eliza Dushku; 1983 – Kevin Systrom (co-founded Instagram); 1984 – LeBron James; 1992 – Carson Wentz

Deaths

1916 – Grigori Rasputin; 1970 – Sonny Liston:boxers:; 1979 – Richard Rodgers♪ ♫; 1993 – Irving "Swifty" Lazar; 1996 – Lew Ayres; 2000 – Julius J. Epstein (co-scripted Casablanca); 2004 – Artie Shaw♪ ♫; 2005 – Rona Jaffe; 2006 – Saddam Hussein

December 31

Today is New Year's Eve.

Today is the first day of Hogmanay.

This is the last day of 2016.


Events

406 – Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul.

1600 – The British East India Company is chartered.

1660 – James II of England is named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France.

1687 – The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope.

1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.

1796 – The incorporation of Baltimore, Maryland as a city.

1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of Canada.

1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.

1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, filed for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine.

1907 – The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in Manhattan, with the ball drop.

1944 – World War II: Hungary declares war on Nazi Germany.

1944 – World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major German offensive on the Western Front begins.

1946 – President Harry S Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.

1951 – The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.

1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.

1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport.

1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.

1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones.

1999 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.

1999 – The United States Government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.

2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).

2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.

2010 – A total of 36 tornadoes touch down in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages.

Births

1491 – Jacques Cartier; 1738 – Charles Cornwallis; 1860 – Joseph S. Cullinan (co-founded Texaco); 1869 – Henri Matisse:artist:; 1878 – Elizabeth Arden; 1880 – George Marshall (Marshall Plan); 1884 – Bobby Byrne; 1908 – Simon Wiesenthal; 1920 – Rex Allen♪ ♫; 1930 – Odetta♪ ♫; 1937 – Anthony Hopkins; 1938 – Rosalind Cash♪ ♫; 1942 – Andy Summers:shred:(The Police); 1943 – John Denver♪ ♫; 1943 – Ben Kingsley; 1944 – Taylor Hackford (director An Officer and a Gentleman); 1946 – Diane von Fürstenberg; 1947 – Tim Matheson; 1948 – Donna Summer♪ ♫; 1951 – Tom Hamilton:bass:(Aerosmith); 1958 – Bebe Neuwirth:love:; 1959 – Val Kilmer; 1959 – Paul Westerberg♪ ♫; 1963 – Scott Ian:shred:(Anthrax); 1964 – Michael McDonald (MadTV); 1965 – Nicholas Sparks; 1972 – Joey McIntyre♪ ♫(New Kids On The Block); 1974 – Tony Kanaan:driving:

Deaths

1948 – Malcolm Campbell:driving:; 1964 – Bobby Byrne; 1972 – Roberto Clemente; 1980 – Raoul Walsh; 1985 – Ricky Nelson♪ ♫; 1994 – Woody Strode; 1997 – Floyd Cramer:keys:; 2000 – Alan Cranston; 2001 – Eileen Heckart; 2013 – James Avery (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air); 2014 – Edward Herrmann; 2015 – Natalie Cole♪ ♫; 2015 – Wayne Rogers (M*A*S*H); 2015 – Beth Howland (waitress 'Vera' on Alice)