This Day In History （请勿跟贴，谢谢！）

brianleeeee

December 18


1865:
Slavery abolished in the United States.
On this day in 1865, by proclamation of the U.S. secretary of state, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery, officially entered into force, having been ratified by the requisite states on December 6.

1997:
Kim Dae Jung was elected president of South Korea, the first opposition leader in that country's history to win that position.

1917:
German General Erich Ludendorff ordered the consolidation of the country's leading motion-picture studios to form UFA (Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft).

1913:
Willy Brandt, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1964 to 1987, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1969 to 1974, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1971, was born.

1912:
The discovery of fossil remains of Piltdown man, an extinct human species, was announced at a meeting of the Geological Society of London, but the remains were later proved to be a fraud.

1886:
American baseball player Ty Cobb, an excellent hitter and base runner, was born in Narrows, Georgia.

1787:
New Jersey became the third state admitted to the United States when it ratified the U.S. Constitution.

1737:
Famed Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona.

brianleeeee

December 17


1903:
Flight of the Wright brothers.
On this day in 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful sustained flights in an airplane—Orville first, gliding 120 feet (36.6 metres) through the air in 12 seconds.

1992:
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed by the leaders of Mexico, Canada, and the United States.

1910:
American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Sy Oliver was born in Battle Creek, Michigan.

1892:
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker was first presented at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

1853:
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, one of the great figures of the English theatre and the most successful actor-manager of his time, was born in London.

1843:
English novelist Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol.

1807:
With Napoleon's decree of Milan, all neutral countries and allies of France were forbidden to trade with Britain.

brianleeeee

December 16


1773:
Boston Tea Party.
On this day in 1773, in what is known as the Boston Tea Party, American colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians threw 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company into Boston Harbor to protest a tax on tea.

1944:
In World War II, German forces attempted to push through Allied lines in the Ardennes, beginning the Battle of the Bulge.

1838:
Voortrekkers killed 3,000 Zulu at the Battle of Blood River in South Africa.

1653:
British soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England.

1631:
More than 3,000 people were killed by a major eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

882:
Marinus I became pope after the death (possibly murder) of John VIII.

brianleeeee

December 15


1939:
Premiere of Gone with the Wind.
Starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, the film Gone with the Wind—a romantic tale of the American South during the Civil War adapted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell—premiered this day in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1939.

1997:
The U.S. Department of Defense ordered that all 1.4 million Americans in its service be inoculated against anthrax, a potential weapon of biological warfare.

1997:
Janet Rosenberg Jagan was elected president of Guyana, becoming the first elected female president in South America and the first white president of Guyana.

1989:
Antigovernment demonstrations erupted in Timișoara, Romania, beginning the revolution that toppled the communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu from power a few days afterward.

1948:
Former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss was indicted on two charges of perjury for lying about his dealings with Whittaker Chambers, who accused him of membership in a communist espionage ring.

1892:
J. Paul Getty, the American oil billionaire, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
1890: The Teton Dakota Indian chief Sitting Bull was killed by U.S. troops on the Grand River in South Dakota.

1791:
The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Bill of Rights, which is a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and limitations on federal and state governments—were adopted as a single unit.

brianleeeee

December 14


1911:
Roald Amundsen's arrival at the South Pole.
One of the greatest figures in the history of polar exploration was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who left Norway for Antarctica in June 1910 and became on this day in 1911 the first person to reach the South Pole.

1960:
The convention establishing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was signed by 18 European countries, the United States, and Canada.
1895: George VI, who became king of the United Kingdom on December 11, 1936, following the abdication of the throne by his brother Edward VIII, was born.

1799:
George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, died at Mount Vernon in Virginia.

1568:
The Casket Letters, found to be damaging to the career of Mary, Queen of Scots, were produced at Westminster before a body of English commissioners appointed by Queen Elizabeth I.

867:
Adrian II was elected Roman Catholic pope.

brianleeeee

December 13


1642:
New Zealand sighted.
On this day in 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted South Island, New Zealand, and later, mistaking the strait north of the island for a bay, believed he had found the west coast of a hypothetical southern continent.

1937:
The Japanese Imperial Army seized Nanjing, China, during the Sino-Japanese War, leading to the Nanjing Massacre, in which up to 300,000 Chinese may have been killed.

1934:
British astronomer J.P.M. Prentice discovered Nova Herculis, one of the brightest novas of the 20th century.

1921:
The Four-Power Pact was signed during the Washington Conference by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France, stipulating that all the signatories would be consulted in the event of a controversy between two of them over “any Pacific question.”

1913:
American boxer Archie Moore, the world light heavyweight boxing champion from 1952 to 1962, was born.

1862:
The Battle of Fredericksburg, a bloody engagement of the American Civil War in which Confederate troops were led to victory by General Robert E. Lee over the Union forces of General Ambrose Everett Burnside, was waged.

1784:
Samuel Johnson, regarded as one of the greatest figures of 18th-century life and letters for his biographies and essays, died in London.

1545:
The Council of Trent, the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic church, which helped revitalize the church in many parts of Europe after the Protestant Reformation, opened in Trent, Italy.

brianleeeee

December 12


2000:
U.S. Supreme Court decision on the presidential election.
On this day in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively awarded the presidency to George W. Bush, ruling that a fair recount of ballots in Florida could not be performed by the deadline for certifying the state's electors.

1964:
Kenya became a republic on the first anniversary of its independence from Britain.

1936:
Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was seized by one of his own generals, Chang Hsüeh-liang, beginning the Sian Incident.

1915:
Popular American singer Frank Sinatra, who also achieved wide success as a motion-picture actor, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey.

1846:
New Granada (now Colombia and Panama) signed the Bidlack Treaty with the United States, granting U.S. right-of-way across the Isthmus of Panama in exchange for a guarantee of neutrality for the isthmus and the sovereignty of New Granada.

brianleeeee

December 11


1936:
Abdication of King Edward VIII.
Edward VIII, failing to win acceptance for his desire to marry American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson, became the only British sovereign to voluntarily resign the crown, his abdication formally approved this day in 1936.

1998:
The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recommended three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, adding a fourth article the following day, for actions taken in connection to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1994:
Russian troops invaded Chechnya in an effort to suppress a rebel Chechen government led by Dzhokhar Dudayev.

1941:
Adolf Hitler declared that Germany was at war with the United States following the Japanese attacks on the U.S., British, and Dutch positions in the Pacific and in East Asia.

1911:
Egyptian novelist and screenplay writer Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Cairo.

1845:
The Sonderbund was formed by the seven Roman Catholic conservative Swiss cantons (Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais) to oppose anti-Catholic measures by Protestant liberal cantons.

brianleeeee

December 10


1901:
Nobel Prizes first awarded.
The first Nobel Prizes were distributed on this day in 1901, the fifth anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who founded and endowed the awards through his will.

1996:
South African President Nelson Mandela signed a new constitution that completed a transition from a long period of white-minority rule (apartheid) to full-fledged democracy.

1982:
A treaty codifying the Law of the Sea was signed by 117 countries.

1948:
The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1898:
Representatives of Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, concluding the Spanish-American War.

1891:
Nelly Sachs, a German Jewish poet and dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, was born.

1850:
In the United States, following the Compromise of 1850, a Georgia state convention adopted the Georgia Platform in qualified support for the Union.

1835:
The social reform and literary movement Young Germany was identified collectively by that name in a resolution passed by the Diet of the German Confederation that demanded suppression of their writings.

1508:
Pope Julius II, the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I, Louis XII of France, and Ferdinand II of Aragon formed the League of Cambrai.

1041:
Michael V Calaphates ascended the throne of the Byzantine Empire following the death of Michael IV.

brianleeeee

December 9


1990:
Lech Wałęsa elected president of Poland.
On this day in 1990, Lech Wałęsa—who had led Solidarity, Poland's first independent trade union, and had received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983—won Poland's first direct presidential election by a landslide.

1998:
The United Nations General Assembly declared anti-Semitism a form of racism.

1990:
Slobodan Milošević was reelected president of Serbia at the head of the Socialist Party, formerly the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS).

1961:
Tanganyika became independent, with Julius Nyerere as its first prime minister, and in 1964 the territory united with the island of Zanzibar to form Tanzania.

1958:
The John Birch Society was founded in the United States by Robert H.W. Welch, Jr.

1824:
Revolutionary forces under the leadership of Venezuelan Antonio José de Sucre defeated the Spanish royal army at the Battle of Ayacucho.

brianleeeee

December 8


1980:
John Lennon fatally shot by deranged fan.
On this day in 1980, British musician John Lennon—who rose to fame with the Beatles and had a successful solo career—was murdered outside his home in the Dakota building in New York City, causing a global outpouring of grief.

2004:
Mia Hamm, a leading figure in U.S. women's football (soccer), retired from the sport.

1991:
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed an agreement to form the Commonwealth of Independent States in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union.

1987:
The intifāḍah, an uprising of Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel, began this week.

1987:
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed a nuclear weapons reduction treaty.

1903:
English thinker and scholar Herbert Spencer, best known for his work The Synthetic Philosophy, died in Brighton, Sussex, England.

1854:
Pope Pius IX proclaimed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, asserting that Mary, Jesus' mother, was preserved free from the effects of “original sin” from the first instant of her conception.

1542:
Mary, Queen of Scots, was born, and six days later she became queen of Scotland.

brianleeeee

December 7


1941:
Pearl Harbor attack.

On this day in 1941, Japanese bombers launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, precipitating the entry of the United States into World War II.

1975:
Shortly after declaring its independence, East Timor was invaded and occupied by Indonesian forces.

1972:
American astronaut Eugene Andrew Cernan commanded the last manned flight to the Moon, effectively ending the Apollo program.

1941:
Adolf Hitler issued his Night and Fog Decree, a secret order for the arrest and execution of “persons endangering German security.”

1917:
The United States declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I.

1787:
Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

brianleeeee

December 6


1921:
Irish Free State established.

The British government and Irish leaders Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and others signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, establishing the Irish Free State as an independent member of the British Commonwealth this day in 1921.

1992:
The Babri Masjid (“Mosque of Bābur”) in Ayodhya was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists, leading to Hindu-Muslim riots throughout India.

1973:
Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president of the United States, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned.

1917:
Finland declared itself independent of Russia, following the Bolshevik Revolution.

1534:
Sebastián de Belalcázar, under the authority of Francisco Pizarro, occupied the Indian city of Quito in what is now Ecuador.

1421:
King Henry VI of England was born in Windsor, Berkshire.

brianleeeee

December 5


1484:
Witchcraft condemned by Pope Innocent VIII.
Innocent VIII condemned witchcraft this day in 1484 via papal bull, and subsequently he dispatched inquisitors to Germany to try witches and persecuted a chief exponent of Renaissance Platonism, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

1955:
The American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) became a united body of autonomous labour unions.

1947:
American boxer Joe Louis defended his heavyweight title against challenger Jersey Joe Walcott in New York City.

1933:
Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing Prohibition.

1791:
Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at age 35.

1784:
Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman poet of note in the United States, died in Boston.

1782:
Martin Van Buren, who served as the eighth president of the United States (1837–41) and was one of the founders of the Democratic Party, was born.

1757:
In his greatest victory, Prussian King Frederick II (the Great) defeated the Austrians at Leuthen during the Seven Years' War.

brianleeeee

December 4


1533:
Ivan the Terrible proclaimed grand prince of Moscow.
On this day in 1533, the three-year-old who became Ivan the Terrible was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow upon the death of his father, Grand Prince Vasily III, with his mother ruling in Ivan's name until her death in 1538.

1996:
The unmanned space vehicle Mars Pathfinder was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in order to explore the surface of Mars.

1918:
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson departed for France to attend the Paris Peace Conference, where, following the cessation of hostilities in World War I, the League of Nations was established and the Treaty of Versailles was drafted.

1892:
General Francisco Franco, who led the Nationalist forces that overthrew the democratic Second Republic in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and subsequently was dictator of Spain until his death, was born.

1679:
English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes died at age 91.

1154:
Adrian IV was elected pope, becoming the only Englishman to occupy the papal throne.

1093:
St. Anselm of Canterbury was consecrated as archbishop.

brianleeeee

December 3


1984:
Gas leak in Bhopal, India.
On this day in 1984, a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, spread over a populated area, resulting ultimately in 15,000 to 20,000 deaths and leaving some half million survivors with chronic medical ailments.

2001:
The U.S. military announced that one of the last 80 Taliban prisoners who had surrendered on December 1 after the November uprising at a prison in Mazār-e Sharīf, Afghanistan, was a U.S. citizen, John Walker Lindh.

1967:
Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the first human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

1895:
Anna Freud, a founder of child psychoanalysis and one of its foremost practitioners, was born in Vienna.

1861:
In a battle during the American Civil War, Federal troops ousted the Confederates from Salem, Missouri.

1854:
After hastily constructing a fortification and barricading themselves inside, miners (“diggers”) working in the Eureka goldfield in Victoria, Australia, opened fire on government forces surrounding the stockade, the culmination of long-standing grievances on the part of the diggers.

1818:
Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the United States of America.

1721:
German composer Johann Sebastian Bach married his second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcken, daughter of a trumpeter at Weissenfels.

1552:
St. Francis Xavier, the leading Roman Catholic missionary of modern times, died of fever off the coast of China.

brianleeeee

December 2


1823:
Monroe Doctrine.
The Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the U.S. would not interfere in European affairs but that its sphere of interest included the entire Western Hemisphere, was enunciated by President James Monroe this day in 1823.

1982:
William C. DeVries implanted the first permanent artificial heart in Barney Clark.

1971:
The United Arab Emirates was formed by the union of six small emirates on the Arabian Peninsula, with a seventh emirate joining in February 1972.

1954:
The U.S. Senate voted to censure Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for his conduct in the investigation of communism in the United States.

1942:
Scientists led by Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago.

1884:
American monologuist and monodramatist Ruth Draper was born in New York City.

1859:
Abolitionist John Brown was hanged following a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1804:
Napoleon was crowned emperor of France by Pope Pius VII.

brianleeeee

December 1


1955:
Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat.
This day in 1955, in violation of segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and was arrested, sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

2000:
Vicente Fox was inaugurated as president of Mexico, ending the dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had ruled since 1929.

1959:
The Antarctic Treaty was signed by 12 countries, making the Antarctic continent a demilitarized zone to be preserved for scientific research.

1925:
Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Italy signed the Pact of Locarno, a series of agreements intended to guarantee peace in western Europe.

1825:
Russian Emperor Alexander I died unexpectedly in southern Russia.

1814:
General Andrew Jackson, commander of the U.S. Army of the Southwest, hastened to defend New Orleans, Louisiana, against British invasion; a series of skirmishes over the next few weeks culminated in the Battle of New Orleans.

brianleeeee

November 30


1966:
Independence of Barbados.
Barbados, an island nation in the Caribbean situated about 100 miles (160 km) east of the Windward Islands, had gained internal self-rule in 1961 and achieved its full independence from Britain on this day in 1966.

1996:
A block of gray sandstone known as the Stone of Scone was returned to Scotland, 700 years after it had been taken to England as war booty by King Edward I.

1939:
After Finland refused to grant the Soviet Union a naval base and other concessions in the fall of 1939, Soviet troops totaling about one million men attacked Finland on several fronts, initiating the Russo-Finnish War.

1936:
A fire virtually destroyed the Crystal Palace, the giant exhibition hall that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851.

1924:
Politician Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, was born.

1908:
The United States and Japan signed the Root-Takahira Agreement, which averted a drift toward possible war through the mutual acknowledgment of certain international policies and spheres of influence in the Pacific.

1874:
British statesman, orator, and author Sir Winston Churchill was born in Oxfordshire, England.

1782:
Britain and the United States signed the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris as part of the Peace of Paris, a collection of treaties concluding the American Revolution.
1718:
Charles XII, king of Sweden, was killed during a siege of the fortress of Fredriksten, east of Oslo Fjord, ending Sweden's “Age of Greatness.”

brianleeeee

November 29


1947:
United Nations resolution for the partition of Palestine.
On this day in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution (not implemented) calling for the partition of Palestine into two separate states—an Arab and a Jewish one—that would retain an economic union.

2001:
George Harrison, formerly of the Beatles, died of cancer at the home of a friend in Los Angeles.

1997:
In a ceremony that was broadcast around the world by satellite, some 28,000 couples gathered at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., for a “wedding” conducted by Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church.

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

1929:
American pioneer aviator Richard E. Byrd flew over the South Pole.

1864:
Colonel John M. Chivington led a controversial surprise attack, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, on a surrendered, partially disarmed Cheyenne Indian camp in southeastern Colorado Territory.

1850:
Prussia and Austria signed the Punctation of Olmütz, an agreement regulating the two powers' relations.

1832:
American author Louisa May Alcott, known for her children's books, especially Little Women, was born.

1830:
A Polish secret society of infantry cadets staged an uprising in Warsaw, beginning the November Insurrection.