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                        A Day In History -  December

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                                    1st

   In 1640 Portugal regains independence after 60 years of Spanish rule.
   In 1783 Charles and M. N. Roberts ascend 2,000' in a hydrogen balloon.
   In 1821 Santo Domingo (Dominican Rep) proclaims independence from
   Spain.
   In 1822 Dom Pedro crowned emperor of Brazil.
   In 1887 Sino-Portuguese treaty recognizes Portugal's control of Macao.
   In 1913 Continuous moving assembly line introduced by Ford (1 car
   every 2.5 minutes).
   In 1918 Iceland becomes independent state under the Danish crown.
   In 1919 Lady Astor sworn-in as 1st female member of British
   Parliament.
   In 1929 BINGO invented by Edwin S Lowe.
   In 1934 Sergei Kirov Josef Stalin's collaborator, assassinated in
   Leningrad.
   In 1935 Woody Allen [Allen Stuart Konigsberg] (Zelig, Annie Hall,
   Manhattan Murder Mystery), born.
   In 1939 Lee Trevino, golfer (US Open 1968,71), born.
   In 1936 Bell Labs tests coaxial cable for TV use.
   In 1940 Richard Pryor, comedian/actor (Lady Sings the Blues, Stir
   Crazy), born.
   In 1945 Bette Midler, singer/actress (Do You Want to Dance?), born.
   In 1947 Aleister Crowley, occultist dies at 74.
   In 1958 Central African Rep made autonomous member of French
   Commonwealth (Nat'l Day).
   In 1959 12 nations sign a treaty for scientific peaceful use of
   Antarctica.
   In 1959 1st color photograph of Earth from outer space.
   In 1973 Australia grants self-government to Papua New Guinea.
   In 1973 David Ben-Gurion founding father of Israel dies in Tel Aviv at
   87.
   In 1987 Digging begins to link England and France under the English
   Channel.
   In 1988 Benazir Bhutto named 1st female PM of a Moslem country
   (Pakistan).
   In 1989 East Germany drops the communist monopoly from its
   constitution.
   In 1989 USSR Pres Mikhail S Gorbachev meets Pope John Paul II at the
   Vatican.
   In 1990 British and French workers meet in English Channel's tunnel
   (Chunnel).
   In 1990 Iraq accepts Bush's offer for talks.
   In 1990 Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia hold their 1st joint session.
   In 1991 Inaugural AIDS awareness day.
   In 1991 Ukrainian people vote for independence.

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   2nd

   In 1804 Napoleon becomes 1st French emperor, placing crown on his own
   head.
   In 1805 Napoleon defeats Russians & Austrians at Austerlitz.
   In 1848 Franz Josef I becomes emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.
   In 1852 2nd French empire established; Louis Napoleon becomes emperor.
   In 1859 Georges Seurat France, painter/pointillist (Grande Jatte),
   born.
   In 1906 Peter Carl Goldmark, developed color TV & LP records, born.
   In 1877 The opera "Samson et Dalila" is produced (Rouen).
   In 1901 Gillette patents 1st disposable razor.
   In 1915 Randolph Hearst newspaper publisher, born.
   In 1942 1st controlled nuclear chain reaction (University of Chicago).
   In 1958 Benelux treaty signed by Belgium, Netherlands & Luxembourg.
   In 1961 Fidel Castro declares he's a Marxist, & will lead Cuba to
   Communism.
   In 1971 Soviet Mars 3 is 1st to soft land on Mars.
   In 1971 Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujeira, Sharjah & Umm ak Qiwain form
   the United Arab Emirates.
   In 1973 Monica Seles tennis star (French Open-1990), born.
   In 1975 Laos People's Democratic Republic founded (National Day).
   In 1982 1st permanent artificial heart successfully implanted (U of
   Utah) in retired dentist Barney Clark; lived 112 days with the
   Jarvic-7 heart.
   In 1986 Desi Arnaz actor (Ricky Ricardo-I Love Lucy), dies at 69.
   In 1988 "Naked Gun" premieres, a movie based on TV's "Police Squad".
   In 1990 First Parlimentary election in newly reunified Germany.

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   3rd

        In 1368 Charles VI [the Well-Beloved], king of France
                (1380-1422), born.
                In 1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to
                England, from Colombia.
                In 1621 Galileo perfects the telescope.
                In 1678 Edmund Halley receives MA from Queen's College,
                Oxford.
                In 1684 Ludvig Baron Holberg, a founder of Danish &
                Norwegian literature, born.
                In 1795 Sir Rowland Hill introduced 1st adhesive postage
                stamp (1840).
                In 1924 John Backus, inventor (FORTRAN computer
                language), born.
                In 1947 Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named
                Desire", opens.
                In 1948 Ozzy Osbourne heavy metal musician, born.
                In 1952 Mel Smith author/comedian, born.
                In 1967 1st human heart transplant performed (Dr
                Christian Barnard, S Africa).
                In 1973 Pioneer 10 passes Jupiter (1st fly-by of an outer
                planet).
                In 1984 2,000 die from Union Carbide poison gas emission
                in Bhopal, India.

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    4th

        In 1489 Battle of Baza-Spanish army captures Baza from the Moors
                In 1563 Council of Trent holds last session, after 18
                years
                1619 America's 1st Thanksgiving Day (VA)
                1674 Father Marquette builds 1st dwelling in what is now
                Chicago
                1680 Hen in Rome lays an egg imprinted with comet not
                seen until Dec 16th
                1682 1st General Assembly in Pennsylvania (Chester)
                1783 General Washington bids officers farewell at
                Fraunce's Tavern, New York NY
                1812 Peter Gaillard of Lancaster, Pa patents a
                horse-drawn mower
                1816 James Monroe, VA elected 5th pres, defeating
                Federalist Rufus King
                1833 American Anti-Slavery Society organizes
                1836 Whig party holds its 1st national convention,
                Harrisburg, Pa
                1843 Manila paper (made from sails, canvas & rope)
                patented, Mass
                1864 Romanian Jews are forbidden to practice law
                1867 Grange organized to protect farm interests
                1875 William Marcy "Boss" Tweed (NYC-Tammany Hall)
                escapes from jail
                1899 56th Congress (1899-1901) convenes
                1899 Webb Hayes son of President Rutherford Hayes
                receives medal of honor
                1909 1st Grey Cup game (University of Toronto 26, Toronto
                Parkdale 6)
                1915 Ku Klux Klan receives charter from Fulton County GA
                1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition closes in SF
                (Opened Feb 20 1015)
                1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes (Yugoslavia)
                proclaimed
                1918 President Wilson sails for Versailles Peace
                Conference in France, 1st chief executive to travel
                outside US while in office
                1920 1st Pro football playoff game Buffalo-7, Canton-3 at
                Polo Grounds
                1922 Lucille Atcherson, becomes 1st woman legation
                sect-US foreign service
                1927 Duke Ellington opens at the Cotton Club in Harlem
                1933 FDR creates Federal Alcohol Control Administration
                1935 1,200 at St Joseph's College (Philadelphia) enroll
                in anticommunism class
                1942 1st US citizenship granted an alien on foreign soil
                (James Hoey)
                1942 FDR orders dismantling of Works Progress
                Administration
                1942 US bombers struck Italian mainland for 1st time in
                WW II
                1943 Commissioner Landis announces any baseball club may
                sign Negroes
                1945 Doc Blanchard becomes 1st junior to win Heisman
                Trophy
                1945 Senate approves US participation in UN
                1947 USSR joins International Amateur Athletic Union
                1949 Bob Gage ties NFL record of a 97 yard touchdown run
                1951 Superheated gases roll down Mount Catarman
                (Phillippines), kills 500
                1952 Killer fogs begin in London England. "Smog" becomes
                a word
                1956 Paul Hornung wins the Heisman Trophy
                1957 1st edition of "Chase's Annual Events" published
                1957 2 commuter trains collide in heavy fog killing 92
                (St John's England)
                1958 Dahomey (Benin), Ivory Coast become autonomous
                within Fr Community
                1961 Museum of Modern Art hung Matisse's Le Bateau upside
                down for 47 days
                1961 Smallest New York Knick, 49th St MSG crowd-1,300
                (snowstorm)
                1961 Tanganyika becomes the 104th member of the UN
                1964 Beatles release "Beatles For Sale" album
                1965 2nd New York Knick game postponed (due to death of
                opponent 76ers' owner)
                1965 Gemini 7 launched with 2 astronauts
                1973 John Cappelletti wins Heisman trophy
                1974 Dutch DC-8 charter crashes in Sri Lanka killing 191
                Moslem pilgrims
                1976 Liz Taylor's 7th marriage (John Warner)
                1977 Jean-Bedel Bokassa, ruler of Central African Empire,
                crowns himself
                1977 NFL's 5,000th game, Cincinnati beats Kansas City
                27-7
                1978 Dianne Feinstein is named San Francisco 1st female
                mayor
                1978 Pioneer Venus 1 goes into orbit around Venus
                1979 Cleveland Cavaliers retire jersey # 7, Bingo Smith
                1979 Liza Minnelli's 3rd marriage (Mark Gero)
                1980 Islanders end 15 game undefeated streak (13-0-2)
                (Colorado Rockies)
                1981 "Falcon Crest" premieres on CBS-TV
                1981 President Reagan allows CIA to engage in domestic
                counter-intelligence
                1981 According to South Africa, Ciskei gains
                independence. Not recognized as an independent country
                outside South Africa
                1982 Hershel Walker wins the Heisman Trophy
                1983 NJ Devils 1st shut-out, beating Minnesota Detroit
                Red Wings 6-0
                1983 US jet fighters strike Syrian anti-aircraft
                positions in Lebanon
                1984 Hijackers commandeered a Kuwaiti airliner
                1985 President Reagan appoints Vice Admiral John
                Poindexter as security adviser
                1986 NASA launches Fltsatcom-7
                1988 Actor Gary Busey critically injured in motorcycle
                crash
                1990 Due to Persian Gulf crisis gas hits $1.60 per gallon
                price in NYC
                1990 Iraq announces it will release all 3,300 Soviet
                hostages
                1991 Judds final concert (Nashville)
                1991 Muslim Shiites release last US hostage Terry
                Anderson (held 6<< years)
                1992 US Troops land in Somalia

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   5th

   1349 Jews are massacred at Nuremberg in Black death riots
   1492 Columbus discovers Hispaniola (El Espanola) (Haiti)
   1496 Jews are expelled from Portugal by order of King Manuel I
   1776 Phi Beta Kappa, 1st American scholastic fraternity, founded
   1831 Former President John Q Adams takes his seat as member of House
   of Reps
   1846 C.F. Schoenbein obtains patent for cellulose nitrate explosive
   1848 President Polk triggers Gold Rush of '49, confirms California
   gold discovery
   1854 Aaron Allen of Boston patents a folding theater chair
   1868 1st American bicycle college opens (New York)
   1876 Daniel Stillson (Mass) patents 1st practical pipe wrench
   1876 Fire at Brooklyn Theater kills 295, trampled or burned to death
   1879 1st automatic telephone switching system patented
   1881 47th Congress (1881-83) convenes
   1905 Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Lib) becomes PM of England
   1908 1st football uniform numerals used (University of Pittsburgh)
   1920 Pro football playoff game Akron & Buffalo 0-0 tie, title
   undecided
   1929 1st US nudist organization (American League for Physical Culture,
   NYC)
   1932 German physicist Albert Einstein granted a visa
   1933 21st Am ratified, 18th Amendment (Prohibition) repealed (5:32 PM
   EST)
   1935 1st commercial hydroponics operation established (Montebello CA)
   1935 National Council of Negro Women forms (New York NY)
   1936 Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR, Kazakh SSR & Kirghiz
   SSR becomes constituent republics of the Soviet Union
   1941 Football Writers Association of America organized
   1941 Sister Elizabeth Kenny new treatment for infantile paralysis
   approved
   1943 NFL Philadelphia Eagle-Pittsburgh Steeler merger dissolves
   1946 President Truman creates Committee on Civil Rights by Exec Order
   #9808
   1947 Jersey Joe Walcott beats Joe Louis
   1948 New York Giant Charley Conerly sets NFL record of 36 pass
   completions
   1949 Ezzard Charles defeats Jersey Joe Walcott for heavyweight boxing
   title
   1950 Sikkim becomes a protectorate of India
   1951 "Dragnet" premiers
   1955 AFL & CIO merge, with George Meany as president
   1955 Historic bus boycott begins in Montgomery Alabama
   1957 NYC becomes 1st city to legislate against racial or religious
   discrimination in housing market (Fair Housing Practices Law)
   1967 Beatles clothing store "Apple" on 94 Baker Street, London, opens
   1968 Rolling Stones release "Beggar's Banquet" LP
   1970 Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe Trophy & Bill Masterson trophy stolen
   from NHL hall of fame
   1973 Cubs' Ron Santo became 1st baseball player to veto his trade
   1973 Paul McCartney releases "Band on the Run" album
   1974 1st Washington Capitals penalty shot, Tom Williams unsuccessful
   vs Buff Sabres
   1974 1st World Football League Bowl, Birmingham Americans beat Florida
   1974 Airport terminal roof collapses killing 17 (Teheran Iran)
   1974 Oliver Tilden Triangle in the Bronx named
   1974 Seattle Seahawks formed
   1975 NASA launches space vehicle S-196, it failed
   1977 Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria,
   Iraq & S Yemen
   1978 Phillies Pete Rose becomes highest paid baseball player
   1978 Pioneer Venus 1 begins orbiting Venus
   1978 Islanders took 28 shots in 1 period vs Penguins; Penguins' Ross
   Lonsberry failed on 7th penalty shot against Islanders
   1981 Marcus Allen of USC wins the Heisman Trophy
   1982 Herschel Walker of Georgia wins the Heisman Trophy
   1982 Seattle University Baptist Church declares sanctuary for Central
   American refugees
   1983 12 killed by a car bomb shattering 9-story building in west
   Beirut
   1983 Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Steve Howe is suspended for 1 year for
   cocaine use
   1985 Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above the 1,500 level for 1st
   time
   1988 Shuttle Atlantis launches world's 1st nuclear-war-fighting
   satellite
   1990 Former Noriega aide Luis del Cid pleads guilty
   1991 Charles Keating Jr (Lincoln Savings & Loan fraud), found guilty
   1991 New York Daily News files for protection under chapter 11

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   6th

   1492 Haiti discovered by Columbus, at Mole Saint Nicolas
   1534 Quito, Ecuador founded by Spanish
   1631 1st predicted transit of Venus (Kepler) is observed
   1732 1st play in American colonies acted by professional players, New
   York NY
   1768 1st edition of "Encyclopedia Britannica" published (Scotland)
   1790 Congress meets in Philadelphia, new temporary US capitol
   1825 President John Adams suggests establishment of a US observatory
   1846 The opera "La Damnation de Faust" is produced (Paris)
   1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland
   1866 Chicago water supply tunnel 3,227 m into Lake Michigan completed
   1870 Joseph H Rainey, 1st black in the House of Reps (SC)
   1873 1st international football game in US: Yale 2, Eton (England) 1
   1875 44th Congress (1875-77) convenes
   1876 1st crematorium in US begins operation, Washington PA
   1876 City of Anaheim incorporated for 2nd time
   1877 Washington Post publishes 1st edition
   1882 Atmosphere of Venus detected during transit
   1884 Aluminum capstone set atop Washington Monument, Washington DC
   1907 Coal mine explosions in Monongah WV, kills 361
   1917 Finland declares independence from Russia (National Day)
   1917 French munitions ship "Mont Blanc" explodes in Halifax, kills
   1,654
   1921 Irish Free State gains independence from Britain
   1922 1st constitution of Irish Free State comes into operation
   1922 1st electric power line commercial carrier in US, Utica NY
   1923 1st presidential address broadcast on radio (President Calvin
   Coolidge)
   1925 Record 73,000 pay to watch Chicago Bears beat New York Giants
   19-7
   1941 NYC Council agrees to build Idlewild (Kennedy) Airport in Queens
   1955 New York psychologist Joyce Brothers won "$64,000 Question" on
   boxing
   1956 Nelson Mandela & 156 others arrested for political activities in
   S Africa
   1957 1st US attempt to launch a satellite fails-Vanguard rocket blows
   up
   1957 AFL-CIO votes to expel Teamsters (readmitted in October 1987)
   1958 US lunar probe Pioneer 3 reaches 107,269 km, falls back
   1960 AL grants Gene Autry a franchise, Los Angeles Angels
   1962 US abandons Skybolt ballistic missile program
   1963 Beatles begin a tradition of releasing a Christmas record for
   fans
   1965 2 trucks crashed into a crowd of dancers (Sotouboua Togo) kills
   125
   1968 Baseball dismisses Commissioner William Eckert after 3 years
   1969 300,000 attend the Altamont CA, rock concert feature Rolling
   Stones
   1970 Cleveland Cavaliers 1st NBA home victory, beating Buffalo Braves
   108-106
   1971 Lewis Franklin Powell confirmed as Supreme Court justice
   1973 Gerald Ford sworn-in as 1st unelected VP, succeeds Spiro T Agnew
   1973 NL votes to move San Diego Padres to Washington DC (doesn't
   happen)
   1974 George Harrison releases "Ding Dong, Ding Dong"
   1975 Senator Robert Dole & Elizabeth Hanford marry
   1977 South Africa grants Bophuthatswana independence
   1980 Jim Bakker rapes Jessica Hahn
   1980 NASA launches Intelsat V
   1981 Rob de Castella of Australia sets Marathon record at 2:08:18
   1982 Senator Ted & Joan Kennedy divorce
   1982 11 soldiers & 6 civilians die by bomb planted by Irish National
   Liberation Army exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland
   1983 A bomb planted on a bus in Jerusalem explodes, kills 6 Israelis
   1984 Hijackers aboard Kuwaiti jetliner kill 2nd hostage
   1985 UK joins US Star Wars project
   1986 Vinny Testaverde of Miami wins the Heisman Trophy
   1987 Three Satanist Missouri teenagers bludgeon comrade to death for
   "fun"
   1988 Agnes Neil Williams purchases the Baltimore Orioles for $70
   million
   1988 Arafat meets prominent American Jews in Stockholm, Sweden
   1988 Milwaukee Bucks win their 1,000th NBA game (2nd fastest)
   1988 Nelson Mandela is transferred to Victor Vester Prison, Capetown
   1988 STS-27 Atlantis lands in California after secret mission
   1989 Worst Canadian mass murder - man kills 14 women at University of
   Montreal
   1990 NHL grants conditional membership to Tampa Bay Lightning
   1990 Saddam announces release of all foreign hostages
   1991 "Star Trek VI-The Undiscovered Country" premieres
   1992 Riots follow Hindu attack on Ayodha Mosque in India

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    7th

   43 -BC- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman writer, gets his head & right
   hand chopped off by Mark Antony's soldiers
   36 -BC- Earliest known Mayan inscription, Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo
   283 St Eutychian ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   1787 Delaware becomes 1st state to ratify constitution
   1836 Martin Van Buren elected 8th president
   1842 New York Philharmonic's 1st concert
   1872 HMS Challenger sets sail on 3<<-year world oceanographic cruise
   1875 Natives Sons of the West organized
   1876 New York Mutuals & Philadelphia A's expelled from NL for not
   completing sked
   1885 49th Congress (1885-87) convenes
   1891 52nd Congress (1st to appropriate $1 billion) holds 1st session
   1909 Leo Baekeland, Yonkers NY, patents 1st thermosetting plastic
   1916 David Lloyd George replaces resigning H. H. Asquith as British PM
   1917 US becomes 13th country to declare war on Austria during World
   War I
   1921 KWG-AM in Stockton CA begins radio transmissions
   1932 1st gyro-stabilized vessel to cross the Atlantic arrives in New
   York
   1934 Wiley Post discovers the jet stream
   1935 Winnipeg Blue Bombers become 1st western team to win Grey Cup
   1938 W9XZY broadcasts facsimile of the St Louis Post-Dispatch by radio
   1941 Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (a date that will live in infamy)
   1st Japanese submarine sunk by a US ship (USS Ward)
   1946 Fire at Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta kills 119
   1956 Helen O'Connell joins the Today Show panel
   1964 George Harrison changes his company's name from Mornyork to
   Harrisongs
   1965 Pope Paul VI & Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously
   lift mutual excommunications that led to split of the 2 churches in
   1054
   1968 Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 launched into Earth orbit
   1968 Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather took
   out in 1823
   1971 Wings release their 1st album "Wild Life"
   1972 Apollo 17, last of Apollo Moon series, launched
   1972 Philippine 1st lady Imelda Marcos stabbed & wounded by an
   assailant
   1973 Wings release "Band on the Run"
   1975 10th Islander shut-out opponent-Glenn Resch 3-0 vs Sabres
   1976 UN Security Council endorses Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General for
   2nd 5 yr term
   1977 Islander Billy Smith's 10th shut-out opponent-Black Hawks 4-0
   1978 Islander's Mike Bossy's 1st career hat trick
   1983 2 jets collided at Madrid Airport killing 93
   1985 Atlantis returns to Kennedy Space Center via Kelly AFB
   1985 Bo Jackson of Auburn wins the Heisman Trophy
   1987 43 die in Pacific Southwest Airline crash in California (man shot
   pilots)
   1987 Gorbachev arrives in the US for a summit meeting
   1988 Armenian SSR rocked by earthquake, 8 on Richter scale (55,000
   die)
   1988 Gorbachev announces 10% unilateral Soviet troop reductions at UN
   1988 Mikhail Gorbachev cheered by Wall St crowds upon arrival in NYC
   1988 New York Islanders fire Simpson, Arbour new coach
   1988 Yasser Arafat recognizes existence of Israel
   1990 Iraqi parliament endorses Saddam's decision to free hostages
   1990 Ted Turner & Jane Fonda announce their engagement
   1993 South African transitional executive council set up
   1995 Galileo arrives on Jupiter

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   8th

   1776 George Washington's retreating army crosses Delaware River from
   NJ
   1792 1st cremation in US, Henry Laurens
   1794 1st issue of the Herald of Rutland, VT published
   1854 Pope Pius IX proclaims Immaculate Conception, makes Mary, free of
   Original Sin
   1863 2,500 reported killed at Church of La Compana, Santiago Chile
   1863 Abraham Lincoln announces plan for Reconstruction of South
   1869 20th Roman Catholic ecumenical council, Vatican I, opens in Rome
   1881 Vienna's Ring Theater destroyed by fire, kills between 640-850
   1886 American Federation of Labor (AFL) formed by 26 craft unions;
   Samuel Gompers elected AFL president
   1896 Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Missing 3 Quarter" (BG)
   1902 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr became Associate Justice on Supreme
   Court
   1909 Bird banding society found
   1913 Construction starts on Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco
   1931 Coaxial cable patented
   1936 NAACP files suit to equalize the salaries of black & white
   teachers
   1938 Highest temperature for December in US recorded in La Mesa CA
   1940 1st NFL championship on national radio; Bears beat Redskins 73-0
   1941 San Francisco 1st blackout, at 6:15 PM
   1941 US & Britain declares war on Japan, enter WW II
   1946 Army rocket plane XS-1 makes 1st powered flight
   1949 Chinese Nationalist government moves from Chinese mainland to
   Formosa
   1952 1st TV acknowledgment of pregnancy (I Love Lucy)
   1956 16th Olympic games end in Melbourne
   1956 1st test firing of the Vanguard satellite program, TV-0
   1956 Guy Mitchell's "Singing the Blues," single goes #1 for 10 weeks
   1961 Larry Costello scores 32 consecutive pts without a miss (NBA rec)
   1962 114-day newspaper strike begins in New York NY
   1963 3 fuel tanks explode when jetliner is struck by lightning
   crashing near Elkton, Maryland. Only case of lightning caused crash
   1966 A terrible Yankee trade, Roger Maris for Card's Charlie Smith
   1966 US & USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space
   1967 Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" album is released in UK
   1967 NHL California Seals change name to Oakland Seals
   1972 United Airlines airplane crashes at Chicago's Midway Airport
   killing 45
   1974 Soyuz 16 returns to Earth
   1980 "Bravo" network premiers on cable tv
   1982 Clark Gilles fails in 7th Islander penalty shot
   1982 Demanding an end to nuclear weapons, Norman Mayer, held the
   Washington Monument hostage. After 10 hrs, police kill him he had no
   explosives
   1983 9th Space Shuttle Mission-Columbia 6-lands at Edwards AFB
   1984 Ringo appears on Saturday Night Live
   1985 Ken O'Brien's 96 yard TD pass (New York Jet record) to Wesley
   Walker
   1986 House Dems select majority leader Jim Wright as 48th speaker
   1987 Flyers' Ron Hextall becomes 1st goalie to actually score a goal
   1987 Jack Sikma (Milwaukee) begins NBA free throw streak of 51 games
   1987 Occupied Palestinians start "Intefadeh" (uprising) against Israel
   1987 President Reagan & Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev sign a
   treaty eliminating medium range nuclear missiles
   1988 Knick's set NBA record of 11 3-pointers & sink Bucks, 113-109
   1991 Russia, Byelorussia & Ukraine form Commonwealth of Independent
   States

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   9th

    1640 Settler Hugh Bewitt banished from Mass colony when he declares
   himself to be free of original sin
   1738 Jews are expelled from Breslau Silesia
   1793 Noah Webster establishes New York's 1st daily newspaper, American
   Minerva
   1824 Battle of Ayacucho (Candorcangui), Peru defeats Spain
   1851 1st Young Men's Christian Association in North America (Montreal)
   1854 Lord Tennyson's poem, "Charge of the Light Brigade," published
   1869 Noble Order of Knights of Labor founded, Philadelphia
   1883 New Brunswick adopts Eastern Standard Time (until 1902)
   1884 Levant Richardson patents ball-bearing skate
   1907 1st Christmas Seals sold (Wilmington Del post office)
   1909 1st US monoplane flown (Henry W Walden, Long Island NY)
   1913 John K. Tener becomes president of baseball's National League
   1917 British forces capture Jerusalem
   1925 Pro football a hit in NYC; Grange & Bears beat Giants before
   73,000
   1926 USGA legalizes steel shaft golf clubs
   1931 Spain becomes a republic
   1934 New York Giants defeat Chicago Bears 30-13 for NFL championship
   1940 British troops 1st major offensive in North Africa during WW II
   1940 Illegal Jewish immigrants to Haifa are deported to Mauritius
   1941 1st US WW II bombing mission in the Far East, Luzon, Philippines
   1941 300 Montgomery, San Francisco opens as new Bank of America HQ
   1941 China declares war on Japan, Germany & Italy
   1941 Citizen Register reports "Hostile planes reported nearing
   Westchester"
   1948 UN General Assembly unanimously approves Convention on Genocide
   1949 NFL merges Cleveland Browns, San Francisco '49ers & Baltimore
   Colts from AAFC
   1951 Voters approve merger of 3 states to form Baden-Worttemberg, W
   Germany
   1953 General Electric announces all Communist employees will be fired
   1953 Montreal Canadians (106) & Toronto Maple Leafs (98) get 204
   penalty minutes.
   1958 Robert H. W. Welch Jr. & 11 other men meet in Indianapolis to
   form the anti-Communist John Birch Society
   1961 SS Colonel Adolf Eichman found guilty of war crimes in Israel
   1961 Tanganyika gains independence from Britain takes name Tanzania
   1961 Wilt Chamberlain of NBA Philadelphia Warriors scores 67 points vs
   New York
   1962 "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" closes on Broadway
   1962 Tanganyika becomes a republic within the British Commonwealth
   1963 Frank Sinatra Jr. is kidnapped
   1963 Zanzibar gains independence from Britain
   1965 Nikolai Podgorny replaces Anastas Mikoyan as president of
   Presidium
   1967 Jim Morrison, arrested on stage for disturbing the peace
   1967 Lyndon Johnson's daughter Lynda marries in the White House
   1967 Nicolea Ceausescu becomes president (dictator) of Romania
   1968 Doug Engelbart demonstrates first computer mouse at Stanford
   1971 Lewis F Powell Jr. appointed to the Supreme Court
   1974 Johnson Grigsby freed after 66 years in jail
   1975 President Gerald Ford signs $2.3 B loan-authorization for NYC
   1978 Pioneer Venus 2 drops 5 probes into atmosphere of Venus
   1978 1st game of the Women's Pro Basketball League (WBL), Chicago
   Hustle vs Milwaukee Does
   1980 61o/F in Boston at 1 AM
   1981 Porn star John Holmes charged with Laurel Canyon murders
   1982 Mary-Beth & William Hurt divorce
   1983 Attorney General Edwin Meese says people go to soup kitchens
   "...because the food is free and that's easier than paying for it"
   1984 6 day hijack of Kuwaiti jet ends
   1985 Phoenix Arizona, gets 3" of snow
   1987 Larry Bird, ends streak of 59 consecutive free throws
   1987 Palestine uprising begin in Israeli-occupied West Bank
   1988 New York Yankees sell all TV rights to cable network in $500 M
   deal
   1990 Lech Walesa wins presidential election in Poland
   1990 NFL New York Giant Otis Anderson becomes 8th to rush for 10,000th
   yard
   1992 Prince Charles & Princess Diana separation announced by British
   PM, John Major


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   10th

   1520 Martin Luther publicly burned papal edict demands he recant
   1672 New York Gov Lovelace announces monthly mail service between New
   York & Boston
   1690 Mass Bay becomes 1st American colonial government to borrow money
   1810 Tom Cribb (GB) beats Tom Molineaus (US-Negro) in 1st interracial
   boxing championship (40 rounds)
   1817 Mississippi admitted as 20th state
   1831 "Spirit of the Times" begins publishing (weekly horse racing
   sheet)
   1864 Sherman reaches Savannah & 12 day siege begins
   1869 Women suffrage (right to vote) granted in Wyoming Territory (US
   1st)
   1896 1st intercollegiate basketball game (Wesleyan beats Yale 4-3)
   1898 Spanish-American War ends; US acquires Philippines, PR & Guam
   1901 1st Nobel Peace Prizes (to Jean Henri Dunant, Frederic Passy)
   1906 President Theodore Roosevelt (1st American) awarded Nobel Peace
   Prize
   1911 Calbraith Rogers completes 1st crossing of US by airplane (84
   days)
   1915 President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Galt
   1918 John A Heyder becomes president of baseball's National League
   1920 President Woodrow Wilson receives Nobel Peace Prize
   1922 Pete Henry makes longest known NFL drop-kicked field goal, 45
   yards
   1927 Grand Ole Opry makes its 1st radio broadcast, in Nashville, TN
   1931 Jane Addams (1st US woman) named co-recipient of Nobel Peace
   Prize
   1932 Thailand receives its 1st constitution
   1934 NFL adopts player waiver rule; applies after 6th game of the
   season
   1936 England replaces King Edward VIII stamp series with King George
   VI
   1948 UN General Assembly adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights
   1950 Ralph J Bunche (1st black American) presented Nobel Peace Prize
   1952 Yitchak Ben-Zvi elected 2nd president of Israel
   1954 Philadelphia Phillies purchase Connie Mack Stadium
   1958 1st domestic (NY-Miami) passenger jet flight-National 707 flew
   111
   1961 Houston Oiler Billy Cannon gains record 373 yards against Titans
   1962 Hunters Point (San Francisco) jitney ends service after 50 years
   1963 6 year old Donny Osmond singing debut on the Andy Williams Show
   1963 Zanzibar becomes independent within British Commonwealth
   1966 Israeli Shmuel Yosef Agnon wins Nobel Prize for literature
   1970 North American Soccer League awards New York & Toronto franchises
   1971 William H Rehnquist confirmed as Supreme Court justice
   1973 1st time since 1885, tennis has 2 top males (S Smith & J Connors)
   1974 Helios 1 launched by US, Germany; later makes closest flyby of
   Sun
   1975 Andrei Sakharov's wife Yelena Bonner, accepts his Nobel Peace
   Prize
   1976 Wings release triple album "Wings Over America"
   1977 Soyuz 26 carries 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 6 space station
   1978 In Oslo, Menachem Begin & Anwar Sadat accept 1978 Nobel Peace
   Prize
   1978 Islanders ends 15 game undefeated streak (12-0-3) to Canadians
   1980 Soyuz T-3 returns to Earth
   1982 Michael Doakes KOs Mike Weaver in 1:03
   1982 Soyuz T-5 returns to Earth, 211 days after take-off
   1983 Danuta Walesa, wife of Lech Walesa, accepts his Nobel Peace Prize
   1983 Last NFL game at Shea Stadium; Steelers beat New York Jets 34-7
   1983 Raul Alfonsin inaugurated as Argentina's 1st civilian president
   1984 South African Bishop Desmond Tutu received his Nobel Peace Prize
   1984 WNSY-AM in Newport News VA returns from WGH
   1986 Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel accepts 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
   1987 "Nightline" is seen in the USSR for 1st time
   1988 Massive Earthquake in Armenia kills 100,000 in cities of
   Leninakan & Spitak
   1988 Washington Capitals 1st NHL scoreless tie, vs. Montreal Canadians
   1990 Space Shuttle STS 35 (Columbia 11) lands

   Back to Top

   11th

   384 St. Damascus I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock (12/21 NS)
   1719 1st recorded display of Aurora Borealis in US (New England)
   1792 France's King Louis XVI went on trial, accused of treason
   1816 Citizens of Geneva thwarted Savoyard invaders
   1816 Indiana becomes 19th state
   1844 1st dental use of nitrous oxide, Hartford, Ct
   1866 1st yacht race across the Atlantic Ocean
   1872 1st black US governor took office, Pinckney Benton Stewart
   Pinchback (La)
   1882 Boston's Bijou Theatre, 1st American playhouse lit exclusively by
   electricity, 1st performance, Gilbert & Sullivan's "Iolanthe"
   1888 French Panama Canal company fails
   1901 Marconi sends 1st transatlantic radio signal, Cornwall to Nfld
   1905 120o/ F (49o/ C), Rivadavia, Argentina (South American record)
   1909 Colored moving pictures demonstrated at Madison Square Garden,
   NYC
   1914 Stockton Street Tunnel (San Francisco) completed
   1917 13 black soldiers hanged for alleged participation in Houston
   riot
   1917 German-occupied Lithuania proclaims independence from Russia
   1919 Boll weevil monument dedicated in Enterprise, Ala
   1928 Buenos Aires police thwart an attempt on Pres-elect Herbert
   Hoover
   1931 British Statute of Westminster gives complete legislative
   independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland,
   Newfndlnd
   1932 San Francisco's coldest day (27o/F).
   1932 Snow falls in San Francisco
   1934 1st Toronto Maple Leaf penalty shot, Conacher unsuccessful vs.
   Rangers
   1934 Ford C Frick becomes president of baseball's National League
   1936 King Edward VIII of England abdicates for woman he loves
   1937 Italy withdraws from League of Nations
   1941 Germany & Italy declare war on US
   1941 Japanese occupy Guam
   1946 UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) established (Nobel 1965)
   1947 Pacific Coast League application for major league status rejected
   1949 Chicago Bear Johnny Lujack passes for 6 touchdowns virsus Chicago
   Cards (52-29)
   1949 Cleveland Browns beat San Francisco '49ers 21-7 in final AAFC
   championship game
   1951 Joe Dimaggio announces his baseball retirement
   1953 KTVA, Anchorage becomes Alaska's 1st TV station
   1954 USS Forrestal christened in Newport News, VA.
   1957 Jerry Lee Lewis weds Myra
   1958 Upper Volta (now Bourkina Fasso) gains autonomy from France
   1959 Yanks trade Marv Thronberry, Don Larsen, Hank Bauer & Norm
   Seibern for Roger Maris, Kent Hadley & Joe Deaestri
   1961 Adolf Eichman is found guilty of war crimes, in Israel
   1961 Elvis Presley's "Blue Hawaii," album goes to #1 & stays #1 for 20
   wks
   1961 JFK provides US military helicopters & crews to South Vietnam
   1966 Al Nelson sets NFL record returning missed field goal, 100 yards
   1967 Beatles' Apple Music signs its 1st group-Grapefruit
   1967 SST prototype "Concorde" 1st shown (France)
   1968 US Soccer Football Association refuses to let NASL disband
   1972 Astronauts Cernan & Harrison become 11th & 12th on the Moon
   1972 Jet's Don Maynard becomes all time pro reception leader (632)
   1973 Houston Astro Caesar Cedino jailed in death of 19 year old woman
   1973 NA Soccer League awards Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle &
   Vancouver franchises
   1973 Ron Santo becomes 1st to invoke no-trade clause of 10-year-1-club
   vet
   1975 First Class Postage rises from 10 cents to 13 cents.
   1975 Great Yankee trade getting Willie Randolph, Dock Ellis & Ken
   Brett from Pirates for George "Doc" Medich
   1978 6 masked men bound 10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at New
   York Kennedy Airport & made off with $5.8 M in cash & jewelry
   1981 Muhammad Ali's 61st & last fight, losing to Trevor Berbick
   1981 Spacelab I arrives at Kennedy Space Center
   1981 UN Sec Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru as 5th
   Secretary-General
   1981 Washington Capitals biggest margin of victory (9) beating Toronto
   11-2
   1983 1st visit to Lutheran church by a pope (John Paul II in Rome)
   1985 Edmonton Oilers (36) & Chicago Black Hawks (26) score NHL record
   62 points
   1985 General Electric acquires RCA Corp & its subsidiary, NBC
   1985 NHL Record 62 points scored, Edmonton (36) beats Chicago (17)
   12-9 & ties record of 21 goals
   1986 A Bartlett Giamatti becomes president of baseball's National
   League
   1989 Mark Davis signs record $3.25 million per year Kansas City Royals
   contract
   1990 13 die in 83 vehicle accident in Chattanooga TN, due to fog
   1990 US 69th manned space mission STS 35 (Columbia 11) returns from
   space
   1991 William Kennedy Smith found not guilty of rape

   Back to Top

   12th

   1479 Jews are expelled from Schlettstadt Alsace by Emperor Frederick
          III
          1769 Pope Clement XIV proclaims a universal jubilee
          1777 Rev Benjamin Russen executed at Tyburn, England for rape
          1787 Pennsylvania becomes 2nd state to ratify US constitution
          1791 Bank of the US opens
          1792 In Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven (22) receives 1st lesson
          in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn
          1800 Washington DC established as capitol of US
          1870 Joseph Rainey (SC) became 1st black sworn into House of
          Reps
          1871 Jules Janssen discovers dark lines in solar corona
          spectrum
          1899 George F Grant of Boston patents golf tee
          1901 Marconi receives 1st transatlantic radio signal, England
          to US
          1906 Oscar Straus, 1st Jewish cabinet member, appointed Sec of
          Commerce
          1913 "Mona Lisa," stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911,
          recovered
          1915 1st all-metal aircraft (Junkers J.1) test flown at Dessau
          Germany
          1917 French troop train derails in French Alps killing 543
          1917 Rev Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha NB
          1925 Arthur Heinman coins term "motel," opens Motel Inn, San
          Luis Obispo
          1925 last Qajar Shah of Iran deposed; Rexa Shah Pahlavi takes
          over
          1937 1st mobile TV unit (New York NY)
          1937 Japanese aircraft shell & sink US gunboat Panay on Yangtze
          River in China. (Japan apologized & eventually paid US $2.2 M
          in reparations)
          1941 German occupying army do a house search in Paris looking
          for Jews
          1946 Ice plant collapses, shearing a tenement building &
          burying 38
          1946 UN accepts 6 Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D
          Rockefeller Jr
          1947 United Mine Workers union withdrew from AFL
          1952 Dallas Texans (former Boston Yanks) play last game, last
          original team
          1953 Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane
          1957 US announces manufacture of Borazon (harder than diamond)
          1959 UN Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space is established
          1961 Ham radio satellite Oscar 1 launched with military
          Discoverer 36
          1961 Martin Luther King Jr. & 700 demonstrators arrested in
          Albany GA
          1963 Frank Sinatra Jr. returned after being kidnapped
          1963 Kenya gains independence from Britain (National Day)
          1964 Shooting starts for Star Trek pilot, "The Cage"
          (Menagerie)
          1965 Gale Sayers of Chicago Bears scores 6 TDs, ties NFL record
          1967 US launches Pioneer 8 into solar orbit
          1968 Rolling Stones film TV show "Rock 'n Roll Circus"-never
          aired
          1970 Small Astronomy Satellite Explorer 42 launched to study
          X-rays
          1973 San Diego files anti-trust against NL (stopping Padres
          move to DC)
          1975 Gas stove explodes & starts fire killing 138 (Mecca Saudi
          Arabia)
          1975 Sara Jane Moore pled guilty to trying to kill President
          Gerald Ford
          1976 Quarterback Joe Namath last game as a New York Jet.
          1977 Yanks purchase Andy Messersmith from Braves
          1979 Gold hits record $462.50 an ounce
          1979 Rhodesia becomes the independent nation of Zimbabwe
          1980 US's copyright law amended to include computer programs
          1981 Wayne Gretsky scores quickest 50th goal (game 39)
          1983 A truck bomb explodes at the US Embassy in Kuwait
          1985 248 US soldiers & 8 crew members die in Arrow Air charter
          crash
          1985 NASA launches space vehicle S-207
          1986 Bone Crusher Smith KO's WBA champ Tim Witherspoon in MSG
          1986 Microlite aircraft circles world non-stop
          1987 Mookie Blaylock sets NBA record of 13 steals in a game
          1987 Rollermania at MSG, Eastern Express beats Midwest Pioneers
          1988 NYC Subway system adds new stations (the Z line)
          1988 Sandra Miller of Queens sues Mike Tyson for sexual
          harassment
          1990 US ambassador to Kuwait, Nathaniel Howell leaves Kuwait
          1991 Actor Richard Gere marries super model Cindy Crawford
          1991 NJ Nets set NBA record of 22 blocks beating Nuggets 121-81
          1991 Orion Pictures filed Chapter 11 for bankruptcy protection
          1993 Ultra-Nationalists make strong gains in Russian elections

   Back to Top

   13th

   1545 Council of Trent (19th ecumenical council) opens
          1577 Sir Francis Drake sets sail from England to go around the
          world
          1642 New Zealand discovered by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman
          1769 Dartmouth College in New Hampshire received its charter
          1774 1st incident of the Revolution-400 attack Fort William &
          Mary, NH
          1816 Patent for a dry dock issued to John Adamson, Boston
          1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, VA; South beats North
          1879 1st federal fish hatching steamer launched (Wilmington
          Delaware)
          1903 Italo Marcioni patents the ice cream cone (NJ)
          1916 Avalanche kills 10,000 Austrian & Italian troops in 24 hrs
          in Tyrol
          1918 US army of occupation crosses the Rhine, enters Germany
          1918 Wilson, becomes 1st to make a foreign visit as president
          (France)
          1919 Ross & Smith land in Australia from a flight from London
          1920 F Pease's interferometer measures 1st stellar diameter
          (Betelgeuse)
          1924 KOA-AM in Denver CO begins radio transmissions
          1928 George Gershwin's "An American In Paris" premieres (New
          York NY)
          1936 Final Boston Redskin NFL game, lose to Packers 21-6, move
          to Wash DC
          1938 Los Angeles freezes at 28o/
          1944 Japanese kamikaze crashes into US cruiser Nashville, kills
          138
          1947 Maine Turnpike opens to traffic
          1949 AL votes down proposal to revive the spitball
          1949 Knesset votes to transfer Israel's capitol to Jerusalem
          1951 Future British PM Margaret Roberts Thatcher marries Denis
          Thatcher
          1959 Archbishop Makarios elected 1st president of Cyprus
          1960 Italy beats US in Davis cup (1st time in 24 years US not
          in finals)
          1963 Capitol records signs right of 1st refusal agreement with
          the Beatles
          1964 In El Paso, TX, LBJ & Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz
          set off an explosion diverting Rio Grande, to reshape US-Mexico
          border
          1967 United Soccer Association & National Pro Soccer League
          merge into NASL
          1968 Playland at the Beach reopens
          1969 Billy Martin fired as Twins' manager
          1971 John Sinclair (sentence: 10 yrs, sold 2 marijuana joints)
          is freed
          1973 World Football League grants 1st franchise (Detroit)
          1974 Malta becomes a republic
          1976 Golden Gate Bridge District starts ferry service to
          Larkspur
          1976 Longest non-stop passenger air flight (Sydney to San
          Francisco 13h14m)
          1977 Entire University of Evansville basketball team, die in
          plane crash
          1978 Susan B Anthony dollar, 1st US coin to honor a woman,
          issued
          1981 Polish government declares martial law, arrests Solidarity
          activists
          1982 Devils' 1st hat trick-Steve Tambellini
          1983 9,655 see highest-scoring NBA game: Detroit 186, Denver
          184 (3 OT)
          1983 Islander's Butch Goring scorings 4 goals against Oilers
          1983 KYA-AM in San Francisco CA changes call letters to KOIT
          1983 Martha Layne Collins inaugurated as Kentucky's 1st female
          governor
          1984 Artificial heart recipient William Schroeder suffers 1st
          stroke
          1988 3 men end 29-hr all-466-station subway ride in NYC
          1988 Arafat addresses UN in Geneva
          1989 Walter Davis (Denver) ends NBA free throw streak of 53
          games
          1989 Forced repatriation of Vietnamese in Hong Kong
          1990 President De Klerk of S Africa meets with Mandela to talk
          of end of apartheid
          1991 Both Koreas sign an accord calling for reconciliation
          1991 New York assembly speaker Mel Miller is convicted of
          federal mail fraud
          1991 Ricky Pierce (Seattle) ends NBA free throw streak of 75
          games

   Back to Top

   14th

   867 Adrian II begins his reign as Catholic Pope
          872 John VIII begins his reign as Catholic Pope
          1287 Zuider Zee seawall collapses with loss of 50,000 lives
          1656 Artificial pearls 1st manufactured by M Jacquin in Paris
          made of gypsum pellets covered with fish scales
          1782 Charleston, SC evacuated by British
          1793 First state road authorized, Frankfort, KY to Cincinnati
          1798 David Wilkinson of Rhode Island patents a nut & bolt
          machine
          1819 Alabama admitted to the Union as 22nd state
          1825 Decembrist uprising in Russia against Tsar Nicholas I
          begins
          1849 1st chamber music group in US gives their 1st concert
          (Boston)
          1863 Battle of Bean's Station-Confederacy repulses Union in
          Tennessee
          1889 American Academy of Political & Social Science organized,
          Philadelphia
          1901 1st table tennis tournament is held, at the London Royal
          Aquarium
          1911 South Pole first reached, by Norwegian Roald Amundsen
          1927 Iraq gains independence from Britain, but British troops
          remain
          1930 New York Giants defeat Notre Dame 22-0 in a charity game
          1934 First streamlined steam locomotive introduced, Albany NY
          1939 League of Nations drops the Soviet Union
          1941 1st NFL division playoff, Bears beat Packers 33-14
          1944 Congress establishes rank of General of the Army (5-star
          general)
          1946 Togo made a trusteeship territory of the UN
          1946 UN General Assembly votes to establish UN HQs in NYC
          1947 Cleveland Browns beat New York Yankees 14-3 in AAFC
          championship game
          1959 J. B. Jordan in F-104C sets world altitude record, 31,513
          m
          1962 Mariner 2 launched, makes 1st US visit to another planet
          (Venus)
          1964 Michael Brown meets Rene Fladen, then writes "Walk Away
          Rene"
          1971 Golden Gate Bridge lights out all night due to power
          failure
          1974 Islander Glenn Resch's 1st shut-out opponent-Kings 3-0
          1975 6 So Moluccan terrorists surrender, holding 23 hostages
          for 12 days
          1975 WCPR (Brooklyn NY pirate radio station) begins
          broadcasting on 1620 AM
          1977 Egypt & Israel reps gather in Cairo for 1st formal peace
          conference
          1980 Anders Kailur scores on 6th Islander penalty shot
          1980 At 2 PM EST there is 10 minutes of silence in memory of
          John Lennon
          1980 New Orleans Saints end 14 game losing streak, beat New
          York Jets 21-20
          1981 Israel annexes Golan Heights
          1982 Marcel Dionne, Los Angeles, becomes 9th NHLer to score 500
          goals
          1986 Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off
          from Edwards AFB, CA on 1st non-stop, non-refueled flight
          around world
          1988 CBS' $1.1 B bid wins exclusive 1990-94 major-league
          baseball rights
          1988 NBA's Miami Heat wins 1st game ever, 89-88 (Clippers),
          after 17 losses
          1988 Spanish general strike to protest austerity measures
          1988 US agrees to talk to Palestine Liberation Org (1st time in
          13 yrs)
          1990 Right to Die case permits Nancy Cruzan to have her feeding
          tube removed, she dies 12 days later
          1991 Desmond Howard of Michigan wins the Heisman trophy.

   Back to Top

   15th

   687 St. Sergius I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
          1612 Simon Marius, is 1st to observe Andromeda galaxy through a
          telescope
          1791 Bill of Rights ratified when Virginia gave its approval
          1792 First life insurance policy issued in US, Philadelphia
          1794 Revolutionary Tribunal abolished in France
          1810 First Irish magazine in US, the Shamrock, is published
          1820 1st general pharmacopoeia in US published, Boston
          1836 Patent Office burns in Washington DC
          1854 1st street-cleaning machine in US 1st used in Philadelphia
          1859 G R Kirchoff describes chemical composition of Sun
          1874 First reigning king to visit US (of Hawaii) received by
          President Grant
          1891 James Naismith invents basketball (Canada)
          1909 Thomas J Lynch becomes president of baseball's National
          League
          1914 Battle of Lodz ends; Russians retreat toward Moscow
          1914 American Radio Relay League (organization for hams)
          founded by Hiram Percy Maxim
          1916 French defeat Germans in WW I Battle of Verdun
          1917 Moldavian Republic declares independence from Russia
          1925 1st hockey game at Madison Square Garden, Montreal
          Canadians 3, New York Americans 1
          1925 1st road with a depressed trough (Texas) opened to traffic
          1927 Ed Hickman kidnaps child he later beheads
          1936 KVL-AM in Seattle Wash changes call letters to KEEN (now
          KING)
          1938 Groundbreaking begins for Jefferson Memorial in Wash DC
          1939 1st commercial manufacture of nylon yarn, Seaford,
          Delaware
          1939 World premiere of "Gone With The Wind" in Atlanta GA
          1941 USS Swordfish becomes 1st US sub to sink a Japanese ship
          1942 Massachusetts issues 1st US vehicular license plate tabs
          1944 Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller, lost over English Channel
          1945 John J "Cardinal" O'Connor, ordained as a priest
          1946 Chicago Bears beat New York Giants 24-14 in NFL
          championship game
          1946 Giants Filchock & Hapes suspended by NFL, didn't report
          bribe attempt
          1948 Former state department official Alger Hiss indicted in
          NYC for perjury
          1950 Ezzard Charles KOs Nick Barone to retain heavyweight
          boxing title
          1950 NYC's Port Authority opens
          1954 Fordham University scraps football team for financial
          reasons
          1954 Netherlands Antilles becomes co-equal part of Kingdom of
          Netherlands
          1959 Everly Brothers record "Let It Be Me"
          1961 Adolf Eichmann convicted of crimes against humanity in
          Israel
          1962 Vaughn Meader's "The 1st Family," album goes #1 & stays #1
          for 12 wks
          1964 Canada adopts maple leaf flag
          1965 3rd cyclone of year kills another 10,000 at mouths of
          Ganges River, Bangladesh
          1965 Gemini 6 launched; makes 1st rendezvous in space (with
          Gemini 7)
          1965 William Eckert replaces Ford Frick as 4th commissioner of
          baseball
          1966 Audouin Dollfus discovers 10th satellite of Saturn, Janus
          1966 John W Mecom Jr becomes 1st owner of the New Orlean Saints
          1967 Beatles release "Christmas Time is Here Again"
          1967 Joe Garagiola joins the Today Show panel
          1967 Silver Bay bridge (Oh-WV) collapses during afternoon rush
          hr, 34 die
          1969 San Francisco Fire Department replaces leather helmets
          with plastic ones
          1970 Ferryboat capsized in Korean Strait drowning 261
          1970 Soviet Venera 7 is 1st spacecraft to land on another
          planet (Venus)
          1973 Golf Resort (The Disney Inn) opens
          1973 Pirates of Caribbean opens
          1973 Sandy Hawley becomes first jockey to win 500 races in 1
          year
          1973 Tennessee beats Temple 11-6 in low scoring NCAA basketball
          game
          1974 A's Catfish Hunter is ruled a free agent (later signs with
          Yankees)
          1976 Argo Merchant tanker off Massachusetts' SE coast, spills
          7.6 m gallons of crude when the ship runs aground
          1979 Deposed Shah of Iran leaves US for Panama
          1979 World Court in Hague rules Iran should release all US
          hostages
          1980 Free agent Dave Winfield signs with Yankees
          1981 NASA launches Intelsat V
          1982 Bill Parcells becomes the 12th head coach of the New York
          Giants
          1982 Roy Williams, Teamsters pres, & 4 others convicted of
          bribery
          1982 Spain reopens border with Gibraltar
          1983 Columbia flies to Kennedy Space Center via El Paso, Kelly
          AFB
          1984 USSR launches Vega 1 for rendezvous with Halley's Comet
          1985 Sylvester Stallone & Brigitte Nielson wed
          1986 Carnegie Hall reopens after a $50 million facelift
          1986 CIA director William Casey suffers a cerebral seizure
          1988 Lori Davis of Long Island sues Mike Tyson for grabbing her
          buttocks
          1990 Rocker Rod Stewart marries super model Rachel Hunter
          1993 GATT Uruguay Round completed
          1993 Downing Street Declaration on Northern Ireland issued
          1994 Diane Modahl banned from Athletics for Drug Use, in the UK

   Back to Top

   16th

   882 John VIII ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   882 Marinus I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1631 Mount Vesuvius, Italy erupts, destroys 6 villages & kills 4,000
   1653 Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland &
   Ireland
   1689 English Parliament adopts Bill of Rights after Glorious
   Revolution
   1773 Big tea party in Boston harbor-Indians welcome
   1809 Napoleon Bonaparte divorces Empress Josephine by the French
   Senate
   1811 Most violent & prolonged quakes in US begins in Midwest region
   1835 Fire consumes over 600 buildings in New York NY
   1838 Boers beat Zulu chieftain Dingaan in South Africa
   1857 Earthquake in Naples, Italy
   1862 Kingdom of Nepal accepts its constitution
   1864 Battle of Nashville
   1893 Anton Dvorak's "New World Symphony" premieres
   1897 1st submarine with an internal combustion engine demonstrated
   1903 Majestic Theater, New York NY, becomes 1st in US to employ women
   ushers
   1905 "Variety," covering all phases of show business, 1st published
   1907 Great White Fleet sails from Hampton Downs on its World Cruise
   1908 1st credit union in US formed, Manchester, NH
   1909 US pressure forces Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya from
   office
   1912 1st US postage stamp picturing an airplane, $0.20 parcel post,
   issued
   1920 Over 180,000 die when earthquake destroys 15,000 miles (Kansu
   China)
   1926 WOW-AM in Omaha NE begins radio transmissions
   1929 1st NHL game at Chicago Stadium (Black Hawks)
   1941 Sarawak occupied by the Japanese
   1943 "Tamiami Champion" trains collide, kills 73 & injures 200
   1944 Battle of the Bulge begins in Belgium
   1950 Truman proclaims state of emergency against "Communist
   imperialism"
   1959 Snow falling in Lowarai Pass West Pakistan kills 48
   1960 134 die as United DC-8 & TWA Super Constellation collide over
   Staten Island, NYC
   1962 Constitutional Monarchical Hindu State of Nep l adopts new
   constitution
   1962 New York Giant YA Tittle sets NFL season touchdown pass record at
   33 with 6 touchdowns vs Dallas (41-31)
   1965 Gemini 6 returns to Earth
   1965 Pioneer 6 launched into solar orbit
   1966 Beatles release "Everywhere it's Christmas" in the UK
   1967 Wilt Chamberlain of NBA Philadelphia 76ers scores 68 points vs
   Chicago
   1969 "War is Over! If You Want It, Happy Christmas from John & Yoko"
   posters begin appearing
   1970 1st successful landing on Venus (USSR)
   1971 Pakistan army surrenders to Indian army in Bangladesh
   1972 Miami Dolphins become first undefeated NFL team (14-0-0)
   1973 O. J. Simpson becomes first NFLer to rush 2,000 yard in a season
   1976 Government halts swine flu vaccination program following reports
   of paralysis
   1978 Ronald Reagan denounces President Jimmy Carter's recognition of
   China PR
   1980 Pres-elect Reagan announces Alexander Haig as secretary of state
   1983 Yogi Berra named Yankee manager for 2nd time
   1983 Riverside, Cal judge denies cerebral palsy victim Elizabeth
   Bouviato request to starve herself to death in a county hospital
   1985 Challenger moves to Vandenberg AFB for mating of STS 51-L mission
   1987 Roh Tae Woo wins Presidential Election in South Korea
   1988 Political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche convicted of tax, mail
   fraud
   1990 KUSW, Salt Lake City Utah, final short-wave radio transmissions
   1991 UN reverses ruling that Zionism is racism by 111-25 (13 abstain)
   vote
   1992 Israel orders deportation of 415 Palestinians after escalating
   terrorist activity

   Back to Top

   17th

   283 St Gaius begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1538 Pope Paul III excommunicated England's King Henry VIII
   1777 France recognizes independence of English colonies in America
   1790 Aztec calendar stone discovered in Mexico City
   1791 NYC traffic regulation creates 1st 1-way street
   1792 Opening of 1st legislative assembly of Lower Canada in Quebec
   city
   1798 1st impeachment trial against a US senator (Wm Blount, TN) begins
   1819 Congress of Angostura establishes Columbia's independence from
   Spain
   1821 Kentucky abolishes debtors prisons
   1852 1st Hawaiian cavalry organized
   1860 Anaheim Township created in Los Angeles County
   1862 General US Grant issues order #11, expelling Jews from Tennessee
   1875 Violent bread riots in Montreal
   1895 Anti-Saloon League of America formed, Washington, DC
   1895 George Brownell patents a machine to make paper twine (Mass)
   1900 1st prize of 100,000 francs offered for communications with
   extraterrestrials. Martians excluded-considered too easy
   1903 At 10:35 AM, 1st sustained motorized aircraft flight (Orville
   Wright)
   1914 Jews are expelled from Tel Aviv by Turkish authorities
   1920 British Empire receives League of Nations mandate to Nauru
   1920 Japan receives League of Nations mandate over Pacific islands
   1920 South Africa receives League of Nations mandate over SW Africa
   1924 1st US diesel electric locomotive enters service, Bronx NY
   1925 Colonel William "Billy" Mitchell court-martial for
   insubordination
   1926 KYA-AM in San Francisco CA begins radio transmissions
   1927 US sub 'S-4' sinks after collision kills all 34 aboard
   1933 National Football League starts keeping official statistics as
   Bears beat Giants 23-21 in championship game
   1939 German pocket battleship Graf Spee scuttled by its crew off
   Uruguay
   1941 German troops led by Rommel begin retreating in North Africa
   1944 Japanese-Americans released from detention camps
   1944 M-Ocean View streetcar resumes service & is extended to Market St
   1944 US Army announces end of excluding Japanese-Americans from West
   Coast
   1946 US V-2 rocket reaches 183 km, White Sands Proving Grounds, NM
   1947 New York struck by a blizzard, resulting with 27" of snow
   1954 1st fully automated railroad freight yard (Gary IN)
   1957 US successfully test-fires Atlas intercontinental ballistic
   missile
   1959 1st movie opening simultaneously in major cities (On The Beach)
   1961 Disgruntled employee set fire to a circus tent in Niteroi Brazil
   1961 India seizes Goa & 2 other Portuguese colonies
   1962 Current constitution of Monaco promulgated
   1965 Largest newspaper-Sunday New York Times at 946 pages ($0.50)
   1969 50m TV viewers saw singer Tiny Tim marry Miss Vicky, on Tonight
   Show
   1969 USAF closes Project Blue Book, concluding no evidence of
   extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings
   1971 Cease-fire between India & Pakistan in Kashmir
   1971 Radio Bangladesh begins transmitting
   1972 New line of control agreed to in Kashmir between India & Pakistan
   1975 1st time New York Islanders shut-out New York Rangers, 3-0-Billy
   Smith's 5th
   1975 John Paul Stevens appointed to the Supreme Court
   1975 Lynette Fromme was sentenced to life for attempt on President
   Ford's life
   1978 Referendum approves new constitution of Rwanda
   1979 Budweiser rocket car reaches 1190 kph (record for wheeled
   vehicle)
   1981 Members of the Red Brigades kidnap Brigadier General James L
   Dozier
   1984 NJ Devils 1st penalty shot-Rocky Trottier scores against Edmonton
   1988 Bryan Murray becomes the 17th NHL coach to win 300 games (Wash
   Caps)
   1988 New York Islanders break 12 game losing streak, beat Devils 5-2
   1988 USS Tennessee, 1st sub to carry Trident 2 missiles, commissioned
   1990 KTBN, Salt Lake City Utah, begins short-wave radio transmissions
   1991 NBA's most lopsided game Cleveland beats Miami 148-80
   1991 Soap opera "One Life To Live" airs its 6,000th episode
   Back to Top

   18th

        1774 Jews expelled from Prague, Bohemia & Moravia by Empress
                Maria Theresa
                1777 1st national Thanksgiving Day, commemorating
                Burgoyne's surrender
                1787 New Jersey becomes 3rd state to ratify constitution
                1796 1st US newspaper to appear on Sunday, Baltimore
                Monitor
                1799 George Washington's body interred at Mount Vernon
                1813 British take Fort Niagara in the War of 1812
                1839 1st celestial photograph (of the moon) made in US,
                John Draper, New York NY
                1849 William Bond obtains 1st photograph of Moon through
                a telescope
                1859 South Carolina declared an "independent
                commonwealth"
                1865 13th Amendment ratified, slavery abolished
                1865 1st US cattle importation law passed
                1898 Automobile speed record set-63 kph (39 mph)
                1915 President Wilson, widowed the year before, marries
                Edith Bolling Galt
                1923 International zone of Tangier set up in Morocco
                1932 Chicago Bears beat Portsmouth Spartans 9-0 in 1st
                NFL playoff game
                1936 1st giant panda imported into US
                1944 Destroyers "Hull," "Spence" & "Monaghan" sink in
                typhoon (Philippines)
                1945 Uruguay joins the United Nations
                1946 TV's 1st network dramatic serial "Faraway Hill" ends
                2 month run
                1949 Philadelphia Eagles beat Los Angeles Rams 14-0 in
                NFL championship game
                1956 Japan admitted to UN
                1957 Shippingport Atomic Power Station, first nuke plant
                to generate electricity
                1958 First test project of Signal Communications by
                Orbiting Relay Equip
                1958 1st voice from space: recorded Christmas message by
                Eisenhower
                1958 Niger gains autonomy within French Community
                (National Day)
                1959 Sammy Baugh named 1st coach of New York Titans (AFL)
                1961 For 2nd cons year, AP names Wilma Rudolph female
                athlete of year
                1961 India annexes Portuguese colonies of Goa, Damao &
                Diu
                1961 Wilt Chamberlain of NBA Philadelphia Warriors scores
                78 points virsus Los Angeles
                1963 Muskegon, MI gets 3' of snow
                1965 Borman & Lovell Splash down in Atlantic ends 2 week
                Gemini VII mission
                1965 Kenneth LeBel jumps 17 barrels on ice skates
                1969 Britain abolishes death penalty
                1971 First Candlelight Processional
                1971 People United To Save Humanity (PUSH) forms by Jesse
                Jackson in Chic
                1972 US began its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam
                1973 Soyuz 13 launched into Earth orbit for 8 days
                1974 San Francisco Visitors Center at City Hall opens
                1977 Cleveland Cavaliers retire jersey # 42, Nate Thumond
                1979 Stanley Barrett 1st to exceed land sonic speed
                (739.666 MPH)
                1980 Bruce Springsteen's concert at Madison Square Garden
                1982 Flight readiness firing of Challenger's main
                engines; 20 seconds
                1983 NBA San Diego Clippers ends 29 game road losing
                streak
                1985 UN Security Council unanimously condemns "acts of
                hostage-taking"
                1987 Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's future pres, marries Asif
                Ali Zardari
                1988 5th meeting of Giants-Jets, Jets win & eliminate
                Giants from playoffs
                1988 Seattle Seahawks win their 1st ever division title
                with 9-7 record
                1989 "I Love Lucy" Christmas episode, shown for 1st time
                in over 30 years
                1991 DeForest Kelly (Dr McCoy on Star Trek) gets a star
                in Hollywood
                1991 General Motors announces the closing of 21 plants

   Back to Top

   19th

   401 St Anastasius I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   1686 Robinson Crusoe leaves his island after 28 years (as per Defoe)
   1732 Benjamin Franklin begins publication of "Poor Richard's Almanack"
   1776 Thomas Paine publishes his 1st "American Crisis" essay
   1777 Washington settles his troops at Valley Forge, Pa for the winter
   1795 First state appropriation of money for road building, Kentucky
   1823 Georgia passes 1st US state birth registration law
   1828 South Carolina declares the right of states to nullify federal
   laws
   1842 US recognizes independence of Hawaii
   1843 Charles Dickens publishes "A Christmas Carol," in England
   1854 Allen Wilson of Connecticut patents sewing machine to sew curving
   seams
   1859 Grading started for Market Street RR
   1861 Battle of Black Water
   1867 Victims of "Angola Horror" burned to death (Angola NY)
   1871 Albert Jones, New York NY, patents corrugated paper
   1881 The opera "Herodiade" is produced (Brussels)
   1887 Jake Kilrain & Jem Smith fight 106 round bare knuckle draw
   1889 Bishop Museum founded in Hawaii
   1890 Start of Sherlock Holmes "The Adventure of The Beryl Coronet"
   (BG)
   1891 1st Negro Catholic priest ordained in US, Charles Uncles,
   Baltimore
   1903 Williamsburg suspension bridge opens between Brooklyn & Manhattan
   1904 The Dawson City (Yukon) hockey team starts walking towards
   Seattle to catch a train to Ottawa to play in the Stanley Cup on Jan
   13 1905
   1907 239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek PA
   1907 Explosion at Jacobs Creek PA, coal mine kills 239
   1910 1st city ordinance requiring white & black residential areas
   (Baltimore)
   1910 Rayon 1st commercially produced, Marcus Hook PA
   1917 1st NHL game played on artificial ice (Toronto)
   1917 Quebec Bulldogs play their 1st professional hockey game
   1919 American Meteorological Society found
   1920 1st US indoor curling rink opens (Brookline, Mass)
   1922 Mrs. Therese Vaughn, 24, confessed in court to being married 62
   times
   1928 1st autogiro (predecessor of helicopter) flight in US
   1930 James Weldon Johnson resigns as executive secretary of NAACP
   1932 British Broadcasting Corp begins transmitting overseas
   1933 Electric Home & Farm Authority Inc, authorized
   1945 Austrian Republic re-establishes
   1946 War breaks out in Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacks French in
   Hanoi
   1948 8th largest snowfall in NYC history (15.3")
   1948 Cleveland Browns beats Buffalo Bills 49-7 in AAFC championship
   game
   1948 Philadelphia Eagles shutout Chicago Cards 7-0 in NFL championship
   game
   1950 General Eisenhower named NATO commander
   1957 "The Music Man," starring Robert Preston, opens on Broadway
   1959 1st Liberty Bowl game-Penn State beats Alabama 7-0
   1960 Fire aboard USS Constellation, under construction at Brooklyn (50
   die)
   1960 Mercury-Redstone 1A reaches 210 km in test flight
   1962 Nyasaland secedes from Rhodesia & Nyasaland
   1962 Street signs in Golden Gate Park approved by Park Commission
   1962 Transit 5A1, 1st operational navigational satellite, launched
   1969 Beatle's 7th Christmas album is released
   1971 NASA launches Intelsat 4 F-3 for COMSAT Corp
   1972 Apollo 17 (last of Apollo Moon landing series) returns to Earth
   1974 Dave Kryskow scores Washington Capitals 1st NHL shorthanded goal
   1974 Nelson A Rockefeller sworn-in as the 41st VP
   1975 John Paul Stevens becomes a Supreme Court Justice
   1980 Anguilla becomes a British dependency separate from St Kitts
   1980 Iran requests $24 billion in US guarantees to free hostages
   1984 Fire at the Wilberg Mine in central Utah killed 27 people
   1984 Scotty Bowman becomes NHL's all time winningest coach
   1984 Wayne Gretzky becomes 18th NHLer to score 1,000 points
   1985 STS 61-C scrubbed at T -13s because of SRB auxiliary power
   problem
   1986 USSR frees dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile
   1987 Bruins' Linseman & Blues' Doug Gilmore score goals, 2 seconds
   apart
   1988 NASA unveils plans for lunar colony & manned missions to Mars
   1988 Oklahoma's College football team gets 3 year probation
   1988 Unexploded WW II bomb found in Frankfurt, Germany-5,000 evacuated
   1989 American Airlines purchases Eastern Airline's Latin American
   route
   1989 Larry Bird (Celtics) begins NBA free throw streak of 71 games
   1991 6,000th episode of One Life To Live
   1991 Boris Yeltsin takes control of Kremlin
   1991 New York Yankee pitcher Steve Howe arrested for cocaine
   possession

   Back to Top

   20th

   1606 Virginia Company settlers leave London to establish Jamestown
   1669 1st jury trial in Delaware; Marcus Jacobson condemned for
   insurrection & sentenced to flogging, branding & slavery
   1699 Peter the Great ordered Russian New Year changed-Sept 1 to Jan 1
   1790 1st successful US cotton mill to spin yarn (Pawtucket, RI)
   1803 Louisiana Purchase formally transferred from France to US for $27
   million dollars.
   1820 Missouri imposes a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men between 21 &
   50
   1850 Hawaiian post office established
   1860 SC votes 169-0 for Ordinance of Secession, first state to secede
   1879 Tom Edison privately demonstrated incandescent light at Menlo
   Park
   1880 New York's Broadway lit by electricity, becomes known as "Great
   White Way"
   1883 International cantilever railway bridge opens at Niagara Falls
   1891 Strongman Louis Cyr withstands the pull of 4 horses
   1892 Phileas Fogg completes around world trip, according to Verne
   1892 Pneumatic automobile tire patented, Syracuse NY
   1893 1st state anti-lynching statue approved, in Georgia
   1900 Giacobini discovers a comet (will be 1st comet visited by
   spacecraft)
   1907 Explosion at Yolande Alabama, coal mine kills 91
   1919 Canadian National Railways established (North America's longest,
   50,000 KM)
   1922 14 republics form Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics (USSR)
   1928 1st international dogsled mail leaves Minot, Maine for Montreal,
   Quebec
   1929 Mount Davidson dedicated as a San Francisco city park
   1938 V. K. Zworykin receives patent on the Iconoscope TV system
   1939 Radio Australia begins overseas short-wave service
   1944 Battle of Bastogne, Nazis surround 101st Airborne (NUTS!)
   1962 The Osmond brothers debut on the Andy Williams Show
   1963 Berlin Wall opens for 1st time to West Berliners
   1966 NBA awards Seattle Supersonics a franchise for 1967-68 season
   1973 AL President Joe Cronin refuses to allow Dick Williams to manage
   Yankees
   1973 Montreal Canadian Henri Richard scores his 1,000th NHL point
   1974 George Harrison releases his "Dark Horse" album in UK
   1976 Israel's PM Yitzhak Rabin resigns
   1977 1st Space walk made by G Grechko from Salyut
   1978 H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's White House chief of staff released from
   jail
   1980 USSR formally announces death of Alexei Kosygin
   1981 "Dreamgirls" opens on Broadway
   1981 Dou Small (Winnipeg Jets) ties NHL record scoring at 5 second
   mark
   1983 Guy Lafleur, Montreal, became 10th NHLer to score 500 goals
   1983 New York Islanders score their most goals (11) vs Pittsburgh
   Penguins
   1983 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat & 4,000 loyalists evacuate Lebanon
   1984 33 unknown Bach keyboard works found in the Yale library
   1985 Denis Potvin passes Bobby Orr as NHL defenseman scorer (916
   points)
   1986 White teenagers beat blacks in Howard Beach NY
   1987 Worst peacetime shipping disaster, Dona Paz collides with Vector
   1,749 confirmed deaths (probably closer to 3,000)
   1988 Animal rights terrorists fire-bomb Harrod's department store,
   London
   1988 NBC signs lease to stay in NYC, 33 more years
   1989 US troops invade Panama & oust Manuel Noriega, but don't catch
   him
   1990 Pentagon warns Saddam that US air power is ready to attack on
   1/15
   1990 Robert F.X. Sillerman purchases WAFL NY-NJ Knights for $11
   million
   1990 Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze resigns
   1991 NHL grants permanent membership to Tampa Lightning & Ottawa
   Senators

   Back to Top

   21st

        1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock (12/11 OS)
                1784 John Jay becomes 1st US secretary of state (foreign
                affairs)
                1829 1st stone arch railroad bridge in US dedicated,
                Baltimore
                1849 1st US skating club formed (Philadelphia)
                1891 18 students play 1st basketball game (Springfield
                College)
                1898 Scientists Pierre & Marie Curie discovers radium
                1909 University of Copenhagen rejects Cook's claim that
                he was 1st to North Pole
                1913 1st crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) printed in New
                York World
                1914 1st feature-length silent film comedy, "Tillie's
                Punctured Romance" released. (Marie Dressler, Mabel
                Normand & Charles Chaplin)
                1915 25.83 cm (10.17") of rainfall, Glenora, Oregon
                (state record)
                1921 Supreme Court rules labor injunctions & picketing
                unconstitutional
                1923 Nepal changes from British protectorate to
                independent nation
                1929 1st group hospital insurance plan effected, Dallas
                TX
                1929 1st US group hospital insurance plan instituted,
                Dallas, TX
                1933 Dried human blood serum 1st prepared, University of
                Pennsylvania
                1933 Newfoundland reverts to being a crown colony
                1937 1st feature-length color & sound cartoon premiers
                (Snow White)
                1941 Last NFL drop kick for an extra point (Ray McLean,
                Chicago Bears)
                1948 O'Neil Place in the Bronx erroneously renamed
                O'Neill Place
                1948 State of Eire (formerly Irish Free State) declares
                its independence
                1952 Broadway Tunnel opens in San Francisco
                1954 Dr Sam Sheppard's wife Marilyn is murdered (he is
                accused of crime)
                1958 Charles De Gaulle wins 7 year term as 1st President
                of 5th Rep of France
                1959 10th largest snowfall in NYC history (13.7")
                1959 Citizens of Deerfield Ill block building of
                interracial housing
                1961 Beatles record "Sweet Georgia Brown" & "Ready Teddy"
                1966 USSR launches Luna 13; soft-landed in Oceanus
                Procellarum
                1968 Apollo 8 (Frank Borman Jim Lovell Bill Anders) 1st
                manned Moon voyage
                1969 Vince Lombardi (Redskins) coaches his last football
                game, losing
                1971 UN Security Council chooses Kurt Waldheim as 4th
                secretary general
                1972 Soviet Union signs a separate peace with East
                Germany
                1973 Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, US & USSR meet in
                Geneva
                1975 1st New York Jet to gain 1,000 yards rushing (John
                Riggins)
                1975 Buffalo Sabres set NHL record of 40 points beating
                Caps 14-2 scoring 5 goals vs Washington Caps in 4:57
                1976 20th Islander shut-out opponent-Billy Smith 3-0
                virsus Bruins
                1976 Patricia R Harris named secretary of HUD
                1976 UN General Assembly passes a resolution declaring
                1979-Year of Child
                1978 Police in Des Plaines IL, arrested John W Gacy Jr.
                for murder
                1979 Gary Unger plays in record 914th consecutive NHL
                game
                1981 Cincinnati beats Bradley 75-73 in 7 OTs (NCAA
                record)
                1983 Loretta Swit weds Dennis Holahan
                1983 NBA Indiana Pacers end a 28 game road losing streak
                1984 Islander Kelly Hrudy's 1st shut-out win-Whalers 1-0
                1984 USSR launches Vega 2 for fly-by of Halley's Come
                1985 ARCO Anchorage runs aground near Port Angeles, WA
                1985 Heart's "Heart," album goes #1
                1987 3 white New York teens convicted of manslaughter in
                death of a black man
                1987 Soyuz TM-4 carries 3 cosmonauts to space station Mir
                1987 Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov launched
                1988 Drexel agrees guilt to security felonies, pays a
                $650 million fine
                1988 New York bound Pan Am jumbo jet explodes over
                Scotland all 258 aboard die
                1988 Pan Am "Flight 103" explodes over Lockerbie,
                Scotland, killing 270
                1988 Vladimir Titov & Musa Manarov return to earth (a
                year) with Chretien
                1989 Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's final speech
                (executed 12/25)
                1989 US invades Panama and ousts General Noriega
                1991 95 share in Madrid Spain $1.3 billion lottery
                (#47996)
                1991 El Sayid Nosair acquitted of killing Meir Kahane
                1991 Ted Turner & Jane Fonda wed

   Back to Top

   22nd

        401 St Innocent I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
                1772 Moravian missionary constructs 1st schoolhouse west
                of Allegheny
                1775 Continental navy organized with 7 ships
                1783 Washington resigns his military commission
                1807 Congress passes Embargo Act, to force peace between
                Britain & France
                1815 Spaniards execute Mexican revolutionary priest Jose
                Maria Morelos
                1870 Jules Janssen, flies in a balloon in order to study
                a solar eclipse
                1877 "American Bicycling Journal" begins publishing
                (Boston, Mass)
                1885 Pope Leo XIII proclaims extraordinary jubilee
                1886 1st national accountants' society in US formed (New
                York NY)
                1888 Heavyweight Boxing champ John L Sullivan challenges
                Jake Kilrain
                1894 United States Golf Association formed (New York NY)
                1894 French officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialed for
                treason, triggers worldwide charges of anti-Semitism
                (Dreyfus later vindicated)
                1910 US postal savings stamps 1st issued
                1915 Federal Baseball League dissolved
                1919 US deports 250 alien radicals
                1924 Babe Dye of NHL's Toronto St. Patrick's' scores 5
                goals beat Bruins 10-2
                1934 Miss Theo Trowbridge sets female bowling record 702
                pins in games
                1936 1st common carrier license issued by ICC, Scranton,
                Pa
                1937 Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic
                1939 125 die in train wreck at Magdeburg Germany; 99 die
                in 2nd wreck at Friedrichshafen Germany
                1941 Winston Churchill arrives in Washington for a
                wartime conference
                1943 WEB Du Bois elected 1st black member, National
                Institute of Arts & Letters
                1944 Germans demand surrender of American troops at
                Bastogne, Belgium
                1946 Cleveland Browns beat New York Yankees 14-9 in AAFC
                championship game
                1947 Italian constituent assembly adopts new constitution
                1950 2 self-propelled trains of Long Island RR collide,
                killing 77
                1959 New York Ranger goalie Marcel Paille wears a
                customized mask
                1962 Kinderman Place in the Bronx named
                1963 Oakland Raider Tom Flores passes for 6 touchdowns vs
                Houston (52-49)
                1963 Official 30-day mourning period for President John F
                Kennedy ends
                1964 Lockheed SR-71 spy aircraft reaches 3,530 kph
                (record for a jet)
                1965 Radio Mil (Domincan Republic) transmitter blown up
                1969 Pete Marovich sets NCAA record of hitting 30 of 31
                foul shots
                1970 SS Commander Franz Stangl of Treblinka, sentenced to
                life in prison
                1971 UN General Assembly ratifies Kurt Waldheim as
                secretary-general
                1974 Phil Esposito, Boston, became 6th NHLer to score 500
                goals
                1974 Referenda in Comoros-3 islands for independence, 1
                stays French
                1976 35 Unification church couples wed in NYC
                1977 36 die as grain elevator at Continental Grain
                Company plant explodes
                1980 Pres-elect Reagan appoints Jean Kirkpatrick (UN
                delegate) & James Watt (Interior)
                1983 Islanders score 3 shorthanded goals against Caps
                1984 Bernhard Goetz shoots 4 black youths on a NYC subway
                train
                1984 Madonna's "Like a Virgin," single goes #1 for 6
                weeks
                1985 STS 51-L vehicle moves to Launch Pad 39B
                1987 Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx overdoses from Heroin
                1988 2 robbers wearing police uniforms rob armored truck
                of $3 M in NJ
                1988 South Africa signs accord granting independence to
                South-West Africa
                1988 Tug hits oil barge, spreads 231,000 gal on 300 mi of
                WA & BC coast
                1989 After 23 years of dictatorial rule, Romania ousts
                Nicolea Ceausescu
                1989 Cold wave: -4o/F in Oklahoma City, -6o/F in Tulsa,
                -12o/F in Pittsburgh PA, -18o/F in Denver CO, -23o/F in
                Kansas City MO, -42o/F in Scottsbluff NB, -47o/F in
                Hardin MT & -60o/F in Black Hills SD
                1990 Iraq announces it will never give up Kuwait
                1990 Israeli ferry capsizes killing 21 US servicemen
                1990 Lech Walesa sworn in as Poland's 1st popularly
                elected president
                1994 Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi resigns

   Back to Top

   23rd

   619 Boniface V begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1569 St Philip of Moscow martyred by Ivan the Terrible
   1672 Giovanni Cassini discovers Rhea, a satellite of Saturn
   1690 John Flamsteed observes Uranus without realizing it's
   undiscovered
   1776 Continental Congress negotiates a war loan of $181,500 from
   France
   1776 Thomas Paine writes "These are the times that try men's souls"
   1779 Benedict Arnold court-martialed for improper conduct
   1783 Washington resigns as US Army's commander-in-chief
   1788 Maryland votes to cede a 10 mile area for District of Columbia
   1823 "Visit from St Nicholas" by C Moore published in Troy (New York)
   Sentinel
   1834 Joseph Hansom of London receives patent for Hansom cabs
   1852 1st Chinese theater in US, Celestial John, opens in San Francisco
   1862 Union General Ben "Beast" Butler is proclaimed a "felon, outlaw &
   common enemy of mankind" by Jefferson Davis
   1867 First self-made woman millionaire (Sarah Breedlove-hair
   straightener), born.
   1893 The opera "Hansel und Gretel" is produced (Weimar)
   1907 First all-steel passenger railroad coach completed, Altoona, Pa
   1909 Albert becomes king of Belgium
   1911 The opera "I Giojelli Della Madonna" is produced (Berlin)
   1913 President Woodrow Wilson signs Federal Reserve Act into law
   1919 1st hospital ship built to move wounded naval personnel launched
   1920 Ireland divided into 2 parts, each with its own parliament
   1926 KEX-AM in Portland OR begins radio transmissions
   1928 NBC sets up a permanent, coast-to-coast network
   1930 Police Bureau of Criminal Alien Investigation started in New York
   NY
   1933 Howie Morenz takes over NHL career goal lead at 251
   1941 American forces on Wake Island surrender to Japanese
   1943 1st telecast of a complete opera (Hansel & Gretel), Schenectady
   NY
   1946 University of Tennessee refuses to play Duquesne University,
   because they may use a black player in their basketball game
   1947 Transistor invented by Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley in Bell Labs
   1951 1st coast-to-coast televised football game (Dumont paid $75,000);
   Los Angeles Rams beat Cleveland Browns 24-17 in NFL championship game
   1962 Cuba starts returning US prisoners from the Bay of Pigs invasion
   1962 Dallas Texans beat Houston Oilers 20-17 in AFL championship game
   1966 Britain's rock TV show, "Ready Steady Go," last program
   1968 1st US case of space motion sickness
   1968 82 members of US intelligence ship `Pueblo' released by North
   Korea
   1968 Borman, Lovell & Anders become 1st men to orbit Moon
   1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued after 70d, survived by
   cannibalism
   1972 Earthquake destroys central Managua, Nicaragua
   1972 Islanders end 15 games winless streak
   1972 "Immaculate Reception" Steelers turns around a 7-6 defeat with a
   last second touchdown reception against the Raiders to win 13-7
   1973 "The Young and the Restless" premiers on TV
   1973 6 Persian Gulf nations double their oil prices
   1975 Congress passes Metric Conversion Act
   1978 Islanders scored 7 goals in 1 period against the Rangers,
   Trotters scores 8 points virsus Rangers, 5 goals-NHL record 6 pts in 1
   period
   1979 New York Islanders greatest shutout lose (8-0) virsus Chicago
   Black Hawks
   1983 Journal Science publishes first report on nuclear winter
   1986 Rutan & Yeager make 1st around-the-world flight without refueling
   1987 Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, serving a life sentence for attempted
   assassination of President Gerald R Ford escapes from Alderson Prison
   1990 Slovenians vote to secede from Yugoslavia
   1991 New York Daily News publisher Kevin Maxwell resigns

   Back to Top

   24th

   640 John IV begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1814 Treaty of Ghent (end of the War of 1812) signed
   1818 "Silent Night" composed by Franz Joseph Gruber; 1st sung next day
   1832 1st US Negro hospital founded by whites chartered, Savannah GA
   1851 Fire devastates Library of Congress in Washington destroys 35,000
   volumes
   1865 Several Confederate veterans form the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tn
   1871 Giusseppi Verdi's "Aida" premieres in Cairo, at Suez canal
   opening
   1874 Pope Pius IX proclaims a jubilee for 1875
   1889 Bicycle with a back-pedal brake patented
   1889 Daniel Stover & William Hance patent bicycle with back pedal
   brake
   1906 Reginald A Fessenden became 1st to broadcast music over radio
   (Mass)
   1910 Luisa Tetrazzini sings to 250,000 people at Lotta's Fountain
   1920 Enrico Caruso gives his last public performance (New York NY)
   1924 Albania becomes a republic
   1933 Paris express train derails & kills 160, injures 300 (France)
   1936 1st radioactive isotope medicine administered, Berkeley, Ca
   1942 1st powered flight of V-1 buzz bomb, Peenemonde, Germany
   1943 FDR appoints General Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied
   forces
   1946 4th French republic established
   1948 First US house completely sun heated is occupied, Dover, Mass
   1951 First televised opera (Amahl & the Night Visitor)
   1951 United Kingdom of Libya gains independence from Italy via the UN
   1953 2 fast express trains crash head-on killing 103 (Czechoslovakia)
   1953 Wellington-Auckland (NZ) express train swept away in flood kills
   166
   1954 Laos gains its independence
   1956 "I Love Lucy" Christmas show airs, never put in syndication
   1961 Houston Oilers beat San Diego Chargers 10-3 in AFL championship
   game
   1964 Shooting begins on "The Cage" the pilot for Star Trek
   1966 Luna 13 lands on Moon
   1966 USAF C144 military charter crashes near Binh Thai Vietnam kills
   129
   1967 Pirate Radio Pegasus starts broadcasting off New Zealand
   1968 Apollo 8 astronauts read passages from Book of Genesis
   1970 9 Jews are convicted in Lenningrad of hijacking a plane
   1970 Walt Disney's "The Aristocats" is released
   1971 Peruvian Airlines Electra crashes at headwaters of Amazon,
   killing all except Juliane Margaret Koepcke found 10 days later
   1973 Ferryboat capsized off coast of Ecuador, drowning 200
   1980 Americans remembered Iran hostages by shining lights for 417
   seconds
   1982 Chaminade, with a student body of only 850 students, beats #1
   ranked Virginia 77-72 in a Honolulu holiday basketball classic
   1986 French hostage Aurel Cornea, held in Lebanon for 9 months,
   released
   1989 Panama's dictator, Manual Noriega seeks asylum at the Vatican
   embassy
   1990 Saddam says Israel will be Iraq's 1st target
   1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Soviet Union

   Back to Top

   25th

   1 1st Christmas, according to calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus
   336 1st recorded celebration of Christmas on Dec 25 occurs in Rome
   597 England adopts Julian calendar
   795 Adrian I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   1066 William the Conqueror, crowned king of England
   1223 St Francis of Assisi assembles First Nativity scene (Greccio,
   Italy)
   1621 Gov William Bradford forbids game playing on this day
   1745 Treaty of Dresden gives much of Silesia to the Prussians
   1758 Halley's comet 1st sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch during
   return
   1760 Juptier Hammon, New York slave, publishes poetry in "An Evening
   Thought"
   1775 Pope Pius VI encyclical on the problems of the pontificate
   1776 Washington crosses Delaware & surprises & defeats 1,400 Hessians
   1818 "Silent Night," by Franz Joseph Gruber & Joseph Mohr sung for 1st
   time
   1818 1st US performance of Handel's Messiah, Boston
   1837 Battle of Okeechobee-US forces defeat Seminole Indians
   1843 1st theatre matinee (Olympic Theatre, NYC)
   1848 New Haven Railroad opens
   1862 40,000 watch the Union army men play baseball at Hilton Head, SC
   1868 Despite bitter opposition, President A Johnson grants
   unconditional pardon to all persons involved in the Southern rebellion
   (the Civil War)
   1875 The Lambs Club in New York founded
   1888 1st indoor baseball game played at fairgrounds in Philadelphia
   1894 First mid-western football team to play on west coast, University
   of Chicago
   1926 Hirohito became emperor of Japan (1926-1989)
   1930 1st US bobsled run open to the public (Lake Placid NY)
   1931 New York's Metropolitan Opera broadcasts an entire opera over
   radio
   1939 Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph the 9th reindeer
   1941 Japan announces surrender of British-Canadian garrison at Hong
   Kong
   1946 Constitution accepted in Taiwan
   1950 Cleveland Browns beat Los Angeles Rams 30-28 in NFL championship
   game
   1953 Avalanche of lava kills 150 (Ruapehu volcano, New Zealand)
   1957 Ed Gein found insane of murder
   1959 A synagogue in Cologne Germany desecrated with swastikas
   1963 Walt Disney's "The Sword In The Stone" is released
   1967 Paul McCartney & Jane Asher get engaged
   1968 Frank Borman's Christmas reading while orbiting Moon
   1971 Longest NFL game (82m40s) as Dolphins beat Chiefs 27-24
   1971 Worst hotel fire in history kills 163 at Taeyokale Hotel in Seoul
   1973 Tommy Chambers (Scotland) finishes 51 yr cycle tour (799,405
   miles)
   1974 Cyclone Tracy virtually destroys Darwin Australia
   1977 Israeli PM Menachem Begin meets in Egypt with Egyptian President
   Sadat
   1983 1st live telecast of Christmas Parade
   1984 NBA's Bernard King scores 60 points
   1987 Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who escaped 2 days earlier, recaptured
   1989 Japanese scientist achieve -271.8o/C, coldest temp ever recorded
   1990 "Godfather III" premiers

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   26th

   268 St Dionysius ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   418 St Zosimus ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   795 St Leo III begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1492 1st Spanish settlement in New World founded, by Columbus
   1620 Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth, MA
   1773 Expulsion of tea ships from Philadelphia
   1776 Battle of Trenton-major British defeat
   1799 George Washington is eulogized by Colonel Henry Lee as "1st in
   war, 1st in peace & 1st in the hearts of his countrymen"
   1805 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts established, Philadelphia
   1825 Erie Canal opens
   1831 The opera "Norma" is produced (Milan)
   1848 1st gold seekers arrive in Panama en route to San Francisco
   1848 William & Ellen Craft escape from slavery in Georgia
   1854 Wood-pulp paper first exhibited, Buffalo
   1860 Maiden voyage of first steamship owned by 1 man (C Vanderbilt)
   1862 1st US navy hospital ship enters service
   1865 James H Mason (Mass) patents 1st US coffee percolator
   1872 4th largest snowfall in NYC history (18")
   1877 Socialist Labor Party of North America holds 1st national
   convention
   1878 1st US store to install electric lights, Philadelphia
   1892 The opera "Cristoforo Colombo" is produced (La Scala)
   1902 Most knock downs in a fight, Oscar Nelson (5) & Christy Williams
   (42)
   1908 Jackson Johnson defeats Tommy Burns at Sydney, Australia for
   boxing title
   1917 Fed government took over operation of American RR for duration of
   WW I
   1919 Yanks & Red Sox reach agreement on transfer of Babe Ruth
   1925 1st East-West football game at Ewing Park before 25,000 fans
   1925 NHL record 141 shots as New York Americans (73) beat Pittsburgh
   Pirates (68) 3-1
   1925 Turkey adopts Gregorian calendar
   1931 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical play "Of Thee I Sing" opens on
   Broadway
   1932 Earthquake kills 70,000 in Kansu China
   1933 US forswears armed intervention in the Western Hemisphere
   1941 Winston Churchill becomes 1st British PM to address a joint
   meeting of Congress, warning that the Axis would "stop at nothing"
   1943 British sink German battle cruiser Scharnhorst
   1944 Battle of Bastogne-US troops repulse the Germans
   1946 Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas opens (start of an era)
   1947 British transfer Heard & McDonald Is (Indian Ocean) to Australia
   1947 Heavy snow blankets Northeast, buries NYC under 25.8" of snow in
   16 hrs. That same day, Los Angeles set a record high of 84o/ F
   1950 Gillette & Mutual buy All Star & World Series rights ($6M for 6
   yrs)
   1954 Cleveland Browns beat Detroit Lions 56-10 in NFL championship
   game
   1955 Cleveland Browns beat Los Angeles Rams 38-14 in NFL championship
   game
   1960 Philadelphia Eagles beat Green Bay Packers 17-13 in NFL
   championship game
   1964 Beatles' "I Feel Fine," single goes #1 & stays #1 for 3 weeks
   1964 Buffalo Bills beat San Diego Chargers 20-7 in AFL championship
   game
   1964 Moors Murderers claim last victim
   1965 "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand closes on Broadway
   1965 Buffalo Bills beat San Diego Chargers 23-0 in AFL championship
   game
   1965 Paul McCartney is interviewed on pirate radio station Radio
   Caroline
   1966 Maulana Karenga establishes Kwanzaa (1st fruits of harvest)
   holiday
   1967 The BBC broadcasts "The Magical Mystery Tour"
   1968 Bruin Ted Green sets NHL penalty record of 3 minors, 2 majors & 2
   game misconducts in a game against the New York Rangers in New York's
   MSG
   1973 2 Skylab 3 astronauts walk in space for a record 7 hours
   1973 Soyuz 13 returns to Earth
   1974 Washington Capitals 1st NHL sellout
   1975 1st supersonic transport service (USSR-Tupolev-144)
   1978 India's former PM, Indira Gandhi, released from jail
   1986 TV soap "Search for Tomorrow" ends 35 year run
   1988 "Legs Diamond" starring Peter Allen opens on Broadway
   1990 Garry Kasparov beats Antatoly Karpov to retain chess championship
   1990 Reggie Williams becomes 1st GM of WLAF's NY-NJ Knights
   1991 Chuck Knolls retires as NFL coach after 23 years
   1991 Jack Ruby's gun sells for $220,000 in auction
   1991 Militant Sikhs kill 55 & wound 70 in India
   1991 New York Islander Derek King ties NJ Devils 5-5 with << second
   left

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   27th

   418 [Etalius] begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1741 Prussian forces took Olmutz, Czechoslovakia
   1825 1st public railroad using steam locomotive completed in England
   1831 Darwin begins his voyage on board the HMS Beagle
   1836 Worst English avalanche kills 8 of 15 buried (Lewes Sussex)
   1845 Ether 1st used in childbirth in US, Jefferson GA
   1850 Hawaiian Fire Department established
   1867 Ontario & Quebec legislatures hold 1st meeting
   1871 World's 1st cat show (Crystal Palace, London)
   1887 Start of Sherlock Holmes "The Adventure of The Blue Carbuncle"
   (BG)
   1892 Foundation Stone of the Cathedral of St John laid (New York NY)
   1892 N.C. Biddle beats Livingston 4-0 in 1st black college football
   game
   1897 Montreal Victorias beat Ottawa Capitals 15-2 for the Stanley Cup
   1900 Carrie Nation's 1st public smashing of a bar (Carey Hotel,
   Wichita KS)
   1903 "Sweet Adeline," a barbershop quartet favorite, is 1st sung
   1906 1st annual meeting of American Sociological Society, Providence,
   RI
   1926 Depot Square in the Bronx renamed Botanical Square
   1926 Latkin Square in Bronx named for 1st US Jewish soldier to die in
   WW I
   1927 "Show Boat" opens at the Ziegfeld Theater (New York NY)
   1927 Stalin's faction wins All-Union Congress in USSR, Trotsky
   expelled
   1932 Radio City Music Hall opens (New York NY)
   1934 1st youth hostel in US opens (Northfield, Mass)
   1937 German immigration officials with no explanation bar Juan Carlos
   Zabala (Arg), 1932 Olympic marathon champion, from entering Germany
   1939 1st American skimobiles (North Conway, NH)
   1939 Between 20,000 & 40,000 die in magnitude 8 quake (Erzincam
   Turkey)
   1941 Japan bombs Manila even though it was declared an "open city"
   1943 France transfers most of her powers in Lebanon to Lebanese
   government
   1945 International Monetary Fund established-World Bank founded
   1946 US wins 1st Davis Cup since 1938
   1947 1st "Howdy Doody Show," (Puppet Playhouse), telecast on NBC
   1949 Queen Juliana (Netherlands) grants sovereignty to Indonesia
   1949 United States of Indonesia gains independence from Netherlands
   1953 Detroit Lions beat Cleveland Browns 17-16 in NFL championship
   game
   1956 Bill Sharman (Boston) ends NBA free throw streak of 55 games
   1959 Baltimore Colts beat New York Giants 31-16 in NFL championship
   game
   1964 Cleveland Browns beat Baltimore Colts 27-0 in NFL championship
   game
   1968 Apollo 8 returns to Earth
   1970 "Hello, Dolly!" closes on Broadway after a record 2,844
   performances
   1972 Los Angeles Kings start Islanders on 12 game losing streak
   1972 New North Korean constitution comes into effect
   1973 Los Angeles Dodgers announce night games will start at 7:30
   instead of 8
   1974 FSLN seizes government hostages at a private Managua party
   1975 Explosion at Chasnala Colliery collapses drowning 350 (Dhanbad
   India)
   1979 "Knots Landing," premieres on CBS-TV
   1979 Red Army beats New York Rangers 5-2 at MSG
   1979 Soviet troops invade Afghanistan, President Hafizullah Amin
   overthrown
   1980 Calvin Murphy (Rockets) begins longest NBA free throw streak of
   78
   1981 Oiler Wayne Gretsky becomes fastest NHL to get 100 pts (38th
   game)
   1983 Propane gas fire devastated 16 blocks of Buffalo
   1985 Terrorists kill 20 & wound 110 attacking El Al at Rome & Vienna
   airports. President Reagan blamed Libyan leader Momar Qadhafi
   1987 Steve Largent sets all-time NFL record for career catches when he
   catches his 752nd pass
   1988 Bulgaria stops jamming Radio Free Europe after more than 3
   decades
   1989 Oregon begins taking bids on NBA games
   1991 Bengals hire Dave Shula as youngest NFL coach (32)
   1991 Chuck Knox retires as Seattle Seahawk coach

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   28th

   418 St Boniface I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
   1816 American Colonization Society organizes
   1832 John Calhoun becomes 1st VP to resign (differences with President
   Jackson)
   1846 Iowa becomes 29th state
   1849 M Jolly-Bellin discovers dry-cleaning, he accidentally upset lamp
   containing turpentine & oil on his clothing & sees cleaning effect
   1850 Rangoon, Burma, destroyed by fire
   1869 William Finley Semple of Mount Vernon OH, patents chewing gum
   1877 John Stevens, WI, applies for patent on flour rolling mill
   1878 Pope Leo XIII encyclical on socialism
   1879 North British Railway's train falls as Firth bridge collapses
   (Scot)
   1887 Sir John Layton Jarvis, 1st British race horse trainer knighted
   1902 1st indoor pro football game, Syracuse beats Philadelphia 6-0
   (MSG, NYC)
   1902 Trans-Pacific cable links Hawaii to US
   1905 Intercollegiate Athletic Association of US founded (becomes NCAA
   in 1910)
   1906 Ecuador adopts its constitution
   1908 Earthquake strikes Messina, Italy; 80,000 die
   1910 The opera "Konigskinder" is produced (New York NY)
   1912 San Francisco Municipal Railway starts operation at Geary St
   (MUNI)
   1915 San Francisco City Hall dedicated by Mayor James Rolph
   1926 Imperial Airways begins England-India mail & passenger service
   1935 W.P.A. Federal Art Project Gallery opens in NYC
   1942 Robert Sullivan becomes 1st pilot to fly the Atlantic 100 times
   1945 Congress officially recognizes "Pledge of Allegiance"
   1947 Chicago Cards beat Philadelphia Eagles 28-21 in NFL championship
   game
   1948 The IDF crosses the Egyptian border
   1950 Chinese troops cross 38th Parallel, into South Korea
   1952 Detroit Lions beat Cleveland Browns 17-7 in NFL championship game
   1958 What might be called greatest NFL game, Colts beat Giants 23-17
   1966 13 die in a train crash in Everett Mass
   1968 100,000 attend Miami Pop Festival
   1968 Beatles' "Beatles-The White Album," goes #1 & stays #1 for 9
   weeks
   1973 Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes "Gulag Archipelag"
   1974 More than 5,200 people killed in Pakistan earthquake
   1975 "Hail Mary Pass"-Cowboys beat Vikings 17-14 on last second pass
   1975 Red Army beats New York Rangers 7-3 at MSG
   1978 30th hat trick in Islander history (Mike Bossy)
   1984 TV soap "The Edge of Night" ends 28 year run
   1985 Warring Lebanese Moslem & Christian leaders sign peace agreement
   1987 In Arkansas R Gene Simmons kills 16
   1988 US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirms Yonkers is guilty of
   racism
   1990 2 die in a NYC subway accident
   1991 8 are crushed to death at a RAP basketball game at City College,
   NYC
   1991 Irene the Icon of the Greek Orthodox church returns after being
   stolen
   1991 Ted Turner is named Time Magazine Man of the Year

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   29th

   1782 1st nautical almanac in US published by Samuel Stearns, Boston
   1813 British burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812
   1837 Canadian militia destroy Caroline, a US steamboat docked at
   Buffalo
   1837 Steam-powered threshing machine patented, Winthrop, Maine
   1845 Texas admitted as the 28th state
   1848 Gas lights 1st installed at White House (Polk's administration)
   1851 1st Young Men's Christian Association chapter opened (Boston)
   1852 Emma Snodgrass arrested in Boston for wearing pants
   1864 Fire Department celebrates 1st annual ball
   1867 1st telegraph ticker used by a brokerage house, Groesbeck & Co,
   New York
   1876 11 passenger cars crash in a ravine near Ashtabula OH
   1890 Federal troops massacre 200+ captive Sioux at Wounded Knee, SD;
   Indian "war" in the west
   1891 Edison patents "transmission of signals electrically" (radio)
   1906 Montreal Wanderers beat New Glasgow (NS) for Stanley Cup (2nd of
   1906)
   1908 patent granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake, Clintonville WI
   1911 San Francisco Symphony formed
   1913 1st movie serial, "Adventures of Kathlyn," premieres in Chicago
   1921 William Lyon Mackenzie King succeeded Arthur Meighen as Canadian
   PM
   1931 Identification of heavy water publicly announced, HC Urey
   1934 1st collegiate basketball doubleheader (MSG)
   1934 Japan renounces Wash Naval Treaty of 1922 & London Treaty of 1930
   1937 2nd Irish constitution goes into effect; Irish Free State renamed
   Erie
   1937 Pan Am starts San Francisco-to-Auckland, New Zealand service
   1938 Construction on Lake Washington Floating Bridge, Seattle, begins
   1940 Germany begins dropping incendiary bombs on London (WW II)
   1948 US State Department announces work on placing objects into Earth
   orbit
   1949 1st UHF television station operating regular basis (Bridgeport
   Ct)
   1949 Hungary nationalized its industries
   1952 1st transistorized hearing aid offered for sale (Elmsford NY)
   1954 Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Netherlands & Netherlands
   Antilles as autonomous parts, comes into being
   1955 Barbra Streisand's 1st recording "You'll Never Know" at age 13
   1957 Detroit Lions beat Cleveland Browns 50-14 in NFL championship
   game
   1957 Singers Steve Lawrence & Edie Gorme wed in Las Vegas
   1958 Baltimore Colts beat New York Giants 23-17 in NFL championship
   game
   1958 TV soap "Young Dr Malone" debuts
   1965 CBS purchases NFL TV rights for 1966-68 at $18.8 million per year
   1965 Supremes release "My World is Empty Without You"
   1966 Pirate Radio Phoenix, 1st transmission (Worcester, Mass)
   1967 Star Trek's "The Trouble With Tribbles" 1st airs
   1968 Baltimore Colts beat Cleveland Browns 34-0 in NFL championship
   game
   1968 New York Jets beat Oakland Raiders 27-23 in AFL championship game
   1972 Eastern Tristar Jumbo Jet crashes near Everglades killing 101
   1975 11 killed, 75 hurt by terrorist bomb at LaGuardia Airport in NYC
   1978 Shah of Iran, asks Shapour Bahktiar to form a civilian government
   1979 Red Army beats New York Islanders 3-2 at Nassau Coliseum
   1980 Shuttle STS-1 moves from Vandenberg AFB to Launch Complex 39A
   1983 US announced withdrawal from UNESCO
   1984 Blues took 27 shots against Islanders in 1 period
   1984 Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi claims victory in parliamentary elections
   1988 Soviet Red Army Team edges New York Islanders, 3-2 at Nassau
   Coliseum
   1988 Victorian Post Office Museum in Australia closes
   1989 Vaclav Havel becomes president of Czechoslovakia
   1989 Wayne Gretzky & Martina Navratilova are named athletes of the
   decade by the Associated Press
   1990 Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton weds Shannon Kelley

   Back to Top

   30th

   274 St Felix I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   1809 Wearing masks at balls forbidden in Boston
   1817 1st coffee planted in Hawaii
   1835 After gold discovery in GA, Cherokees forced to move across Miss
   R
   1844 The opera "Stradella" after being rewritten is produced (Hamburg)
   1853 Gadsden Purchase 45,000 mi (120,000 km) by Gila River from Mexico
   for $10 million. Area is now southern Arizona & New Mexico
   1854 Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co, 1st in US, incorporated in NYC
   1875 Andrassy Note calls for Christian-Muslim religious freedoms
   1896 Montreal Victorias beat Winn Victorias 6-5 for the Stanley Cup
   1897 Province of Zululand annexed to Natal colony
   1903 602 die as flames swept through Iroquois Theater in Chicago
   1903 American Political Science Association founded at New Orleans
   1903 Fire at Chicago's Iriquois Theater kills 602
   1906 Iran becomes a constitutional monarchy
   1907 Abraham Mills' commission declares Abner Doubleday invented
   baseball
   1908 Montreal Wanderers loses to Edmonton but retain Stanley Cup (4th
   of 1908). Cup is won by total points in a 2 game series
   1911 Sun Yat-sen elected 1st President of Republic of China
   1917 Lowest temperature recorded at a mountain city (-32o/F-Tennessee)
   1924 Edwin Hubble announces existence of other galactic systems
   1927 Japan dedicates 1st subway in the Orient (route under 2 miles
   long)
   1929 Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority incorporates
   1935 Italian bombers destroy Swedish Red Cross unit in Ethiopia
   1936 United Auto Workers stage 1st sit-down strike, at Fisher Body
   Plant
   1938 Electronic television system patented, VK Zworykin
   1944 King George II of Greece, renounces his throne
   1947 King Michael of Romania, forced by communists abdicates his
   throne
   1952 Tuskegee Institute reports 1952 as first year in 71 with no
   lynching in US
   1956 New York Giants beat Chicago Bears 47-7 in NFL championship game
   1959 The George Washington, frist ballistic missile sub commissioned
   1962 Green Bay Packers beat New York Giants 16-7 in NFL championship
   game
   1963 Congress authorizes the Kennedy half dollar
   1967 Beatles' "Hello Goodbye," single goes #1 & stays #1 for 3 weeks
   1968 -48o/ F (-44o/ C), Mazama & Winthrop, Washington (state record)
   1971 Long Island NHL franchise purchased (New York Islanders)
   1972 President Nixon halts bombing of North Vietnam & announces peace
   talks
   1973 1st picture of a comet from space (Comet Kohoutek-Skylab)
   1973 Miami Dolphins beat Oakland Raiders 27-10 in AFC championship
   game
   1973 Minnesota Vikings beat Dallas Cowboys 27-10 in NFC championship
   game
   1975 Constitution of Democratic Republic of Madagascar comes into
   force
   1977 Carter holds 1st news conference by US President in Eastern
   Europe (Warsaw)
   1978 Ohio State dismisses Woody Hayes as its football coach
   1979 Rock group, Emerson, Lake & Palmer break up
   1981 Wayne Gretzky sets NHL record of 50 goals by 39th game of season
   1982 US Assay Office in New York City NY closes
   1984 Miss Elizabeth (Hulette) & Macho Man Randy Savage (Poffo) wed
   1985 IBM-PC DOS Version 3.2 released
   1985 President Zia of Pakistan ends martial law
   1986 US begins Military exercises in Honduras
   1988 Canadian Senate OK's free trade pact; with US
   1988 Former Soviet President Brezhnev's son-in-law sentenced to 12-yr
   (bribery)
   1988 Mercedes-Benz pays $20.2-M fine failed to meet '86 government
   fuel standard
   1988 Yugoslav government resigns
   1988 North subpoenas Reagan & Bush as defense witnesses for upcoming
   trial

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                                    31st

   335 St. Sylvester I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
   1492 Jews are expelled from Sicily
   1600 British East India Company chartered
   1744 James Bradley announces discovery of Earth's motion of rotation
   1775 Battle of Quebec; Americans unable to take British stronghold
   1776 Rhode Island establishes wage & price controls to curb inflation:
   Limit is $0.70 a day for carpenters, $0.42 for tailors
   1781 Bank of North America, 1st US bank opens
   1805 End of French Republican calendar; France returns to Gregorianism
   1841 Alabama becomes 1st state to license dental surgeons
   1852 Future president & Mrs. Rutherford B Hayes marry
   1857 Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as new capitol of Canada
   1862 Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee
   1862 President Lincoln signs act admitting West Virginia to the Union
   1862 Union ironclad ship "Monitor" sank at Cape Hatteras, NC
   1870 J D Schneiter patents rocket mail in France, (not done)
   1879 Cornerstone laid for Iolani Palace (only royal palace in US)
   1879 Edison gives 1st public demonstration of his incandescent lamp
   1879 The opera "The Pirates of Penzance" is produced (New York NY)
   1890 Ellis Island (New York NY) opens as a US immigration depot
   1897 Brooklyn's last day as a city, it incorporates into NYC
   (1/1/1898)
   1907 For the 1st time a ball drops at Times Square to signal the new
   year
   1921 Last San Francisco fire horses retired
   1923 1st transatlantic radio broadcast of a voice,
   Pittsburgh-Manchester
   1924 Hubble announces existence of distant galaxies.
   1934 Helen Richey becomes 1st woman to pilot an airmail transport
   1941 Young Park (2) in the Bronx named in honor of Samuel Young
   1943 NYC's Times Square greets Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater
   1944 48 people die in a train accident in Ogden, Utah
   1945 Ratification of UN Charter completed
   1946 French troops leave Lebanon
   1946 President Truman officially proclaims end of WW-II
   1950 Jockeys W Shoemaker & Joe Culmone set record of 388 wins in a
   year
   1951 1st battery to convert radioactive energy to electrical announced
   1953 Hulan Jack sworn in as Manhattan Borough president
   1953 Willie Shoemaker shatters record, riding 485 winners in a year
   1957 AAU awards Bobby Morrow, James Sullivan Memorial Trophy
   1958 International Geo-physcial Year ends
   1958 Willie Shoemaker 1st jockey to win national riding championship
   4X
   1961 1st performance of the Beach Boys
   1961 Green Bay Packers shutout New York Giants 37-0 in NFL
   championship game
   1961 Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $12 billion
   1962 American Basketball League announces suspension of operation
   1962 Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
   1964 Donald Campbell (UK) sets world water speed record (276.33 mph)
   1966 Monkee's "I'm a Believer" hits #1 & stays there for 7 weeks
   1966 Pirate Radio 390 (Radio Invicata) off England, resumes
   transmitting
   1967 Oakland Raiders beat Houston Oilers 40-7 in AFL championship game
   1967 Packers beat Cowboys 21-17 in NFL championship game (-13o/ F)
   1968 1st supersonic airliner flown (Russian TU-144)
   1970 Congress authorizes the Eisenhower dollar coin
   1970 Paul McCartney files a lawsuit to dissolve the Beatles
   1972 Leap second day; also in 1973-79, 1987
   1972 Miami Dolphins beat Pittsburgh Steelers 21-7 in AFC championship
   game
   1972 Washington Redskins beat Dallas Cowboys 26-3 in NFC championship
   game
   1974 Free agent pitcher Catfish Hunter signs $3 million Yank contract
   1974 Gold legal in US, Franklin Mint strikes Panama's Gold 100 balboa
   coin
   1976 TV soap "Somerset" ends 6 year run
   1977 Donald Woods, a banned white editor flees South Africa
   1977 Ted Bundy escapes from jail in Colorado
   1977 WFAT (Brooklyn NY pirate radio station) begins broadcasting on
   1620 AM
   1978 Taiwan's final day of diplomatic relations with the US
   1979 Winterland Rock Concert Hall in San Francisco closes after 556
   concerts
   1980 A Jewish owned hotel in Nairobi Kenya is bombed killing 18
   1980 New York Islanders greatest shutout margin (9-0) vs Chicago Black
   Hawks
   1981 Lt Rawlings stages coup in Ghana
   1982 TV soap "The Doctors" ends 19 year run
   1983 Brunei gains complete independence from Britain
   1984 NYC subway gunman Bernhard Goetz surrenders to police in NH
   1984 Rajiv Gandhi takes office as India's 6th PM succeeds his mom,
   Indira
   1985 King Hussein of Jordan and President Assid hold talks
   1986 Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico kills 97
   1986 WIS-AM in Columbia SC changes call letters to WVOC (now WOMG)
   1990 Iraq begins a military draft of 17 year olds
   1990 The Sci-Fi Channel on cable TV begins transmitting
   1991 Dow Jones closes at record high 3168.83
   1992 Target date for Europe's single market
   1999 Control of Panama Canal reverts to Panama

   Back to Top

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