Today in History

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From the newsletter I do for work now and then - some interesting/important/amusing historical events that occurred on this date.

3340 BC — Earliest believed record of an eclipse.
1835 - Mark Twain is born (d. 1910)
1954 - The first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human being occurs at Sylacauga, Alabama, when a meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounces off a radio, and strikes a woman on the hip.
1968 - Shops told to stop conning customers - Shopkeepers will face prosecution under a new trade law if they do not tell the truth about the goods they are selling from now on.
1979 - The album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd was released.
1982 — Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, is released.
1984 - Nintendo releases Excitebike for the NES in Japan.

 

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Links:
Meteorite strikes Alabama woman — History.com This Day in History — 11/30/1954
BBC ON THIS DAY | 30 | 1968: Shops told to stop conning customers

 

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December 1:

1835 - Hans Christian Andersen publishes his first book of fairy tales
1860 - Charles Dickens publishes the first installment of Great Expectations in his magazine All the Year Round.
1948 – Taman Shud Case: The body of an unidentified man is found in Adelaide, Australia, involving an undetectable poison and a secret code in a very rare book; the case remains unsolved and is "one of Australia's most profound mysteries."
1955 - Black woman challenges race law - A black woman is arrested by police in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white person.
1966 – The first Gävle goat, an annual Swedish Yule Goat tradition, is erected in Gävle.

 

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December 2

1775 – The USS Alfred becomes the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag (the precursor to the Stars and Stripes); the flag is hoisted by John Paul Jones.
1804 - At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French, the first French Emperor in a thousand years.
1908 – Puyi becomes Emperor of China at the age of two.
1956 - The Granma yacht reaches the shores of Cuba's Oriente province and Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement disembark to initiate the Cuban Revolution.
1985 - Petros, the pelican, is hit by a car and dies.
1988 - Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islam-dominated state.

 

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December 7

1869 – American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri.
1916 – Birth: Yekaterina Budanova, Soviet pilot, one of only two female flying aces (d. 1943)
1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing a declaration of war upon Japan by the United States.
1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

1998 - Yachtsman Jesse Martin departs from Melbourne on his circumnavigation journey around the world.


*note: Budanova was apparently born on the 6th. Someone's changed the date on wikipedia since last year when it was the 7th. I included her anyway, because I felt like it.

 

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December 8

65 BC – Birth: Horace, Roman poet (d. 8 BC)
1660 – A woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.
1854 - Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogma of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin.
1940 - The Chicago Bears defeat the Washington Redskins 73-0, in the NFL Championship Game. This is the most lopsided game in NFL history.
1943 - Birth: Jim Morrison, American singer (The Doors) (d. 1971)

1980 - Mark David Chapman shoots and kills John Lennon in front of The Dakota apartment building with five bullets.
1987 - National Hockey League Goalie Ron Hextall becomes the first goalie in the modern era to score a goal
1991 – The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.
2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the first launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

Holidays and Observances

• Afflux (Discordianism)

 

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December 16

1773 - American Revolution: Boston Tea Party - Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
1928 - Birth: Philip K. Dick, American writer (d. 1982)
1973 - O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills becomes the first NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.
1997 – An episode of Pokémon, "Dennō Senshi Porygon", aired in Japan induces seizures in 685 Japanese children.

 

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December 29

1914 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel by James Joyce, is serialized in The Egoist.
1997 - Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's chickens (1.25 million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain. LA Times article.
2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

 

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January 4

1785 - Born: Jakob Grimm, German philologist and folklorist (d. 1863)
1936 - Mickey's Polo Team, a short animated film featuring Charlie Chaplin, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, and Harpo Marx in a polo match against various Disney characters, is first released. YouTube link.

1958 - Explorer Hillary arrives at South Pole - Sir Edmund Hillary arrives at the South Pole - the first explorer to do so since Captain Scott in 1912.
1972 — Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, England.
2007 - The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.