Today in History (December 21st)

First day of winter

1603: Birthdays: British theologian and American settler Roger Williams.

1620: The Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth, Mass., following a 63-day voyage from England aboard the Mayflower.

1795: Birthdays: British dog breeder John Jack Russell.

1804: Birthdays: British statesman Benjamin Disraeli.

1872: The HMS Challenger set sail from Norfolk, commanded by Captain George Nares.

1892: Birthdays: Golf Hall of Fame member Walter Hagen.

1911: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Josh Gibson.

1913: The first crossword puzzle in an American newspaper appeared in The New York Sunday World.

1918: Birthdays: Former Austrian President and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

1926: Birthdays: Former Penn State football Coach Joe Paterno.

1935: Birthdays: Former talk show host Phil Donahue.

1937: Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature film, opened in Los Angeles. Birthdays: Actor Jane Fonda.

1940: Birthdays: Rock musician Frank Zappa.

1946: Birthdays: Beach Boys guitarist Carl Wilson.

1948: Birthdays: Actor Samuel L. Jackson.

1950: Birthdays: Film executive Jeffrey Katzenberg.

1954: Birthdays: Former tennis star Chris Evert.

1957: Birthdays: Comedian Ray Romano.

1958: Three months after a new French Constitution was approved, Charles de Gaulle was elected the first president of the Fifth Republic by a sweeping majority of French voters.
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1959: Birthdays: Olympic gold medal-winning athlete Florence Griffith-Joyner.

1965: Birthdays: Actor Andy Dick.

1966: Birthdays: Actor Kiefer Sutherland.

1967: Birthdays: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

1968: Apollo 8, the first manned voyage to the moon, was launched.

1975: The notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal led a raid on a meeting of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna. German and Arab terrorists stormed in with machine guns, killed three people and took 63 others hostage, including 11 oil ministers.

1988: Pan Am Flight 103 exploded and crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone aboard and 11 people on the ground for a total death toll of 270.

1990: A boat carrying about 100 U.S. sailors involved in Operation Desert Shield capsized off the Israeli coast. Twenty-one people died.

1991: 11 former Soviet republics declared an end to the Soviet Union and forged a commonwealth that guaranteed independence.

1992: 54 people were killed when a chartered jetliner carrying 340 people on a holiday to southern Portugal crashed in bad weather.

1993: Hungary’s Parliament endorsed the nomination of Peter Boross as president, succeeding Jozsef Antall, who died in office Dec. 12.

1994: More than 40 people were injured when an incendiary device exploded on a crowded subway in New York’s lower Manhattan. Police arrested one of the burn victims who reportedly was carrying a firebomb that went off.

1995: A commuter train rammed the rear of a passenger train in heavy fog near Cairo, Egypt, killing 75 people.

1998: The shaky coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu collapsed when Israel’s Parliament voted 81-30 to dissolve the government.

2004: U.S. President George W. Bush’s approval rating slipped 6 percentage points to 49 percent, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said, making Bush the first incumbent president to have an approval rating less than 50 percent one month after winning re-election.

2007: Pakistani officials said a suicide bomber’s assassination attempt on a former official killed at least 50 people and hurt 80 others in a crowded mosque in Lahore.

2009: The U.S. government set a three-hour limit on the time airlines can keep passengers waiting on a tarmac without giving them food or letting them off the plane. A truck loaded with fertilizer barreled into a crowded market in the Nigerian town of Allo with an official death toll of 55.

2010: A Census Bureau report showed the United States with a population of 308,747,538. California remained the most populous state, followed by Texas and Florida. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was sworn in for a second term after a months-long political deadlock and set up a unity government with representatives from all major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

2011: Syrian forces battled army defectors and anti-government activists in a blaze of violence with a reported 3-day death toll of 230 people. Western intelligence said more than 10,000 Syrian soldiers deserted.


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