This Day in History

[omeg]

11/26........President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.A powerful early winter storm batters the New England coast on this day in 1898, killing at least 450 people in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first souls to enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3,000 years. Tutankhamen's sealed burial chambers were miraculously intact, and inside was a collection of several thousand priceless objects, including a gold coffin containing the mummy of the teenage king.On this day in 1942, Casablanca, a World War II-era drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City; it will go on to become one of the most beloved Hollywood movies in history.On this day in 1862, Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson sends a handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell.The television series MTV Unplugged, featuring stripped-down acoustical performances by a wide range of artists not usually known for such performances, makes its broadcast premiere on this day in 1989.1983 Heathrow Airport, robbed of 6,800 gold bars worth $38.7 million1979 International Olympic Committee votes to readmit China1962 Fab Four have their 1st recording session under name Beatles1941 Lebanon gains independence from France1867 Refrigerated railroad car patented by J. B. Sutherland history.com,brainyhistory.com

 

[Mben]

PMM2008 wrote: In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first souls to enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3,000 years. Tutankhamen's sealed burial chambers were miraculously intact, and inside was a collection of several thousand priceless objects, including a gold coffin containing the mummy of the teenage king.

This interests me so much! The ancient Egyptians, the Pyramids, everything about them.   

 

[omeg]

11/27On this day in 1940, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee is born in San Francisco, California. In his all-too-brief career, Lee became a film star in Asia, and a pop-culture icon, posthumously, in America.Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix is born in Seattle. Hendrix grew up playing guitar, imitating blues greats like Muddy Waters as well as early rockers. He joined the army in 1959 and became a paratrooper but was honorably discharged in 1961 after an injury that exempted him from duty in Vietnam. In the early 1960s, Hendrix worked as a pickup guitarist, backing musicians including Little Richard, B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, and Sam Cooke. In 1964, he moved to New York and played in coffeehouses, where bassist Bryan Chandler of the British group the Animals heard him. Chandler arranged to manage Hendrix and brought him to London in 1966, where they created the Jimi Hendrix Experience with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. The band's first single, Hey Joe, hit No. 6 on the British pop charts, and the band became an instant sensation.On November 27, 1965, Detroit Red Wing Gordie Howe scores his 600th goal in a game against the Montreal Canadiens. He was the first (and the last, until Wayne Gretzky) NHL player to score 600 times in his career. Hed broken the previous record--544 goals, set by the legendary Canadien Maurice Rocket Richard--in November 1963. That games referee told reporters that Gordie Howe can do more things better than anyone else. Thats just all there is to it. 1962 1st test flight of the Boeing 727 takes place1960 Gordie Howe becomes 1st NHLer to score 1,000 points1951 1st missle to intercept an airplane, White Sands, New Mexico1910 New Yorks's Penn Station opens as world's largest train station1895 Alfred Nobel establishes Nobel Prizehistory.com,brainyhistory.com 

 

[omeg]

11/28After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, becoming the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic.A New Zealander sightseeing plane traveling over Antarctica crashes, killing all 257 people on board, on this day in 1979. It was the worst airplane accident in New Zealand's history.On this day in 1582, William Shakespeare, 18, and Anne Hathaway, 26, pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gives birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins.Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, serving 15 consecutive life sentences for the brutal murders of 15 men, is beaten to death by a fellow inmate while performing cleaning duty in a bathroom at the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium in Portage, Wisconsin.The Grand Ole Opry, one of the longest-lived and most popular showcases for western music, begins broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee. The showcase was originally named the Barn Dance, after a Chicago radio program called the National Barn Dance that had begun broadcasting the previous year.During the early-60s girl-group explosion, the Shangri-Las score their first and only #1 hit on this day in 1964 with the famously melodramatic epic Leader Of The Pack. On November 28, 1895, Frank Duryea wins the first motor-car race in the United States, a 54-mile loop along the lakeshore from Chicago to Waukegan and back again. The race was a harrowing one--It was held during one of Chicagos great snowstorms, and the contestants cars got stuck in snowdrifts, slid into other vehicles and stalled repeatedly. Duryea, who completed the race in 10 hours and 23 minutes, traveled at an average speed of 5 1/4 miles per hour.History.com

 

[Mben]

PMM2008 wrote: On this day in 1582, William Shakespeare, 18, and Anne Hathaway, 26, pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gives birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins.

I wonder if  

was named after 

's wife ................... Anne Hathaway.  

 

[omeg]

11/29......A massive car and truck collision in Coalinga, California, kills 17 people on this day in 1991. More than 100 vehicles were involved in the accident on Interstate 5, which was caused by a dust storm.One week after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, President Lyndon Johnson establishes a special commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination.On this day in 1981, the actress Natalie Wood, who starred in such movies as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, drowns in a boating accident near Californias Catalina Island. She was 43 years old.On November 29, 1997, Grambling State University football coach Eddie Robinson coaches his last college football game. (Gramblings Tigers played the Southern University Jaguars at the Superdome in New Orleans; Southern won, 30-7.) Hed been coaching at Grambling, a historically black college near Shreveport, for 55 seasons. His career record--408-165-15--was the second-winningest in college football. (The recordholder, John Gagliardi of St. Johns University in Minnesota, won 443 games. He broke Robinsons record in 2003.) Robinsons Grambling team sent 220 players to the NFL and four to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Eddie Robinson molded as many great athletes as he recruited, a former player for a rival team remembered. If you were good enough to play for Grambling, you were good enough to play in the NFL. History.com

 

[Mben]

Natalie Wood was a beautiful woman. I can still remember about her drowning all those years ago.

 

[omeg]

11/30........Richard Mallory, a storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida, is last seen taking a ride with Aileen Wuornos. The following day, his carcontaining his wallet, some condoms, and an empty vodka bottlewas found abandoned in a remote area of Ormond Beach. Nearly two weeks later, his body turned up in a Daytona Beach junkyard with three bullets in his chest. Mallory's murder was the first of seven committed by Aileen Wuornos over the next year. Perhaps because she was one of the few women killers to gain widespread fame and notoriety, she was inaccurately dubbed America's first female serial killer. Her case was heavily publicized through television talk show appearances and a documentary, The Selling of a Serial Killer. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. 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. The victim, Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges, was sleeping on a couch at the time of impact. The space rock was a sulfide meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds and measuring seven inches in length. Mrs. Hodges was not permanently injured but suffered a nasty bruise along her hip and leg. During a White House ceremony attended by James S. Brady, President Bill Clinton signs the Brady handgun-control bill into law. The law requires a prospective handgun buyer to wait five business days while the authorities check on his or her background, during which time the sale is approved or prohibited based on an established set of criteria. On this day in 2004, after winning 74 straight games and more than $2.5 million--a record for U.S. game shows--Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings loses. Jennings' extended winning streak gave the game show a huge ratings boost and turned the software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah into a TV hero and household name, at least temporarily. Barbara Walters named him one of the 10 most fascinating people of the year (along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Republican operative Karl Rove and hotel heiress-socialite Paris Hilton, among others) and Jennings appeared on such shows as Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and even Sesame Street. Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, is born in Florida, Missouri, on this day in 1835. On November 30, 1931, legendary football coach Bill Walsh is born in Los Angeles, California. Though the young Walsh played on the Hayward High School football team, he was not a particularly gifted athlete; nor, for that matter, was he an especially good student. As a result, though he wanted to go to Cal or Stanford to play football, neither school would take him. He ended up playing quarterback for two years at a junior college in San Mateo, then playing receiver at San Jose State. He came back to San Jose for his masters degree and worked as the graduate assistant football coach--and there, for the first time, he began to shine. In Walshs personnel file, head coach Bob Bronzan wrote: I predict Bill Walsh will become the outstanding football coach in the United States. History.com -- Edited by PMM2008 on Tuesday 30th of November 2010 09:06:10 AM

 

[omeg]

12/2...."
"
"
"
"
On this day in 2001, the Enron Corporation files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a New York court, sparking one of the largest corporate scandals in U.S. history."
"
"
"
"
On this day in 2002, Toyota delivers its first two market-ready hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCHVs, in the company's shorthand) to researchers at the University of California at Irvine and the University of California at Davis. Since 1997, Toyota had been providing research money to UC scientists and engineers who studied the problems associated with advanced transportation systems like fuel-cell vehicles. With their new fleet of FCHVs, the researchers finally had a chance to test out their theories."
"
"
"
"
"
"
Opening testimony takes place in the highly publicized rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Jean Kennedy Smith, the presidents sister and a former ambassador to Ireland. Smith, then a 30-year-old medical student at Georgetown University, was accused of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old Florida woman in the early hours of March 30, 1991, at the Kennedy familys Palm Beach compound."
"
"
"
"
The Malpasset Dam in France collapses on this day in 1959 and the resulting flood kills more than 400 people. The city of Frejus, dating back to Caesar's time, was devastated by the massive flood."
"
"
"
"
"
On December 2, 1972, the Temptations earn the last of their four chart-topping hits when Papa Was A Rollin' Stone reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. "
"
"
"
"
"
History.com

 

[omeg]

12/3.............On December 3, 1979, the last Pacer rolls off the assembly line at the American Motors Corporation (AMC) factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When the car first came on the market in 1975, it was a sensation, hailed as the car of the future. When you buy any other car, ads said, all you end up with is today's car. When you get a Pacer, you get a piece of tomorrow. By 1979, however, sales had faded considerably. Today, polls and experts agree: the Pacer was one of the worst cars of all time.Meeting off the coast of Malta, President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issue statements strongly suggesting that the long-standing animosities at the core of the Cold War might be coming to an end. Commentators in both the United States and Russia went farther and declared that the Cold War was over.An explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on this day in 1984, leads to the worst industrial accident in history. At least 2,000 people died and another 200,000 were injured when toxic gas enveloped the city.On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.On this day in 1948, John Michael Ozzy Osbourne, the heavy-metal musician and star of the pioneering reality TV program The Osbournes, which originally aired from 2002 to 2005, is born in Birmingham, England.The general-admission ticketing policy for rock concerts at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in the 1970s was known as festival seating. That term and that ticketing policy would become infamous in the wake of one of the deadliest rock-concert incidents in history. Eleven people, including three high-school students, were killed on this day in 1979, when a crowd of general-admission ticket-holders to a Cincinnati Who concert surged forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and secure prime unreserved seats inside. Illinois achieves full statehood on this day. Though Illinois presented unique challenges to immigrants unaccustomed to the soil and vegetation of the area, it grew to become a bustling and densely populated state.history.com

 

[omeg]

Meet the PACER: : LOL"
"
"
"
The pic is small, but so was the car.

 

[omeg]

Happy Birthday Ozzy...........[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MLp7YNTznE][/video]

 

[omeg]

December 4th.....On this day in 1991, Islamic militants in Lebanon release kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity. Heavy smog begins to hover over London, England, on this day in 1952. It persists for four days, leading to the deaths of at least 4,000 people. The Dei Gratia, a small British brig under Captain David Morehouse, spots the Mary Celeste, an American vessel, sailing erratically but at full sail near the Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was seaworthy, its stores and supplies were untouched, but not a soul was onboard. The modest storefront recording studio at 760 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, played an outsize role in rock-and-roll history. And of the many historic moments that occurred there, none is more famous than the impromptu jam session by four young rock-and-roll giants that took place on this day in 1956a session enshrined in rock-and-roll legend as the one-and-only gathering of the Million Dollar Quartet. On December 4, 1997, the National Basketball Association (NBA) suspends Latrell Sprewell, three-time All Star point guard for the Golden State Warriors, for one year after he attacked Warriors coach P.J. Carlesimo. During practice on December 1, Sprewell had a verbal confrontation with Carlesimo when the coach told him to put a little mustard on a pass. When Carlesimo approached him, Sprewell grabbed the other man around the neck and began choking him, until he was pulled away by several other players and team officials. Told to leave practice, Sprewell returned within 20 minutes and threw a punch at Carlesimo before he was again pulled away. Well-known psychiatrist W.H. Rivers presents his report The Repression of War Experience, based on his work at Britain s Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers, to the Royal School of Medicine, on this day in 1917. Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, was one of the most famous hospitals used to treat soldiers who suffered from psychological traumas as a result of their service on the battlefield. 1996 NASA's 1st Mars rover launched from Cape Canaveral1991 Pan American World Airways ceased operations1976 Liz Taylor's 7th marriage to John Warner1970 Unemployment in U.S. increases to 5.8 percent1945 Senate approves U.S. participation in UN history.com/brainyhistory.com -- Edited by PMM2008 on Saturday 4th of December 2010 02:21:10 PM

 

[omeg]

[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFpxQOd5tHA][/video]

 

[omeg]

12/5At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.A fire at the Brooklyn Theater in New York kills nearly 300 people and injures hundreds more on this day in 1876. Some victims perished from a combination of burns and smoke inhalation; others were trampled to death in the general panic that ensued.The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. At 5:32 p.m. EST, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the requisite three-fourths majority of states' approval. Pennsylvania and Ohio had ratified it earlier in the day.The first Medal of Honor awarded to a U.S. serviceman for action in Vietnam is presented to Capt. Roger Donlon of Saugerties, New York, for his heroic action earlier in the year.On this day, John Steinbeck's nonfiction book The Sea of Cortez is published. The book reflects Steinbeck's serious study of marine biology. He also uses his knowledge of the sea and its creatures in creating Doc, the marine biologist character in Cannery Row (1945).history.com

 

[omeg]

DECEMBER 7th....... At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II. On this day in 1787, Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the Constitution, doing so by a unanimous vote. On this day in 1964, the New York City Board of Estimate votes to revive a controversial plan to build a 10-lane, $100 million elevated expressway across Lower Manhattan from the Holland Tunnel on the west to the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges on the east.Two earthquakes hit Armenia on this day in 1988, killing 60,000 people and destroying nearly half a million buildings. The two tremors, only minutes apart, were measured at 6.9 and 5.8 in magnitude and were felt as far away as Georgia, Turkey and Iran.The first execution by lethal injection takes place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Charles Brooks, Jr., convicted of murdering an auto mechanic, received an intravenous injection of sodium pentathol, the barbiturate that is known as a truth serum when administered in lesser doses.On December 7, 1989, the boxer Sugar Ray Leonard triumphs over a lackluster Roberto Duran in a unanimous 12-round decision at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Leonard became a sensation in the boxing world during the 1980s, providing a superstar presence that boxing lacked after Muhammad Ali retired in 1981. After a successful amateur career, Leonard earned real notice when he won a gold medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Three years later, he won the World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight title over Wilfred Benitez.In a memorandum to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara states that U.S. troop strength must be substantially augmented if we are to avoid being defeated there. Cautioning that such deployments would not ensure military success, McNamara said the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong continue to believe that the war will be a long one, that time is their ally and their own staying power is superior to ours. history.com

 

[omeg]

December 9th.... On this day in 1992, 1,800 United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country. On this day, a young engineer at General Motors named Thomas Midgeley Jr. discovers that when he adds a compound called tetraethyl lead (TEL) to gasoline, he eliminates the unpleasant noises (known as knock or pinging ) that internal-combustion engines make when they run. Midgeley could scarcely have imagined the consequences of his discovery: For more than five decades, oil companies would saturate the gasoline they sold with lead--a deadly poison. Unseasonably low temperatures in Tehran, Iran, lead to the deaths of at least 40 people on this day in 2003. Rarely do such large groups die at the same time. British Prime Minister John Major announces the formal separation of Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, and his wife, Princess Diana. Major explained that the royal couple were separating amicably. The report came after several years of speculation by the tabloid press that the marriage was in peril, citing evidence that Diana and Charles spent vacations apart and official visits in separate rooms. Nothing in her professional credentials suggested the Australian pop singer Helen Reddy as a feminist icon prior to 1972. She'd made her way to the United States from her native Australia on her own to pursue stardom, and she'd paid her dues working on the periphery of the music business for a number of years before making a breakthrough. Yet when that breakthrough came, it was in the form of a 1971 cover version of I Don't Know How To Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstarhardly a song about women's liberation. But a feminist icon is exactly what Helen Reddy would become the very next year, when the anthem-to-be I Am Woman charged up the pop charts, reaching the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1972. On this day in 1965, the Cincinnati Reds trade outfielder Frank Robinson to the Baltimore Orioles, in exchange for the pitchers Milt Pappas and Jack Baldschun and the outfielder Dick Simpson. The trade is widely regarded as one of the worst in major league baseball history.(this is for Mben.....)1985 Phoenix Arizona, gets 3 inches of snow history.com -- Edited by PMM2008 on Thursday 9th of December 2010 12:25:35 PM

 

[omeg]

December 10thThe first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.On December 10, 1915, the 1 millionth Ford car rolls off the assembly line at the River Rouge plant in Detroit.Frank Sinatra Jr., who was kidnapped in Lake Tahoe, California, on December 8, is allowed to talk to his father briefly. The 19-year-old man, who was trying to follow in his father's footsteps by pursuing a singing career, was abducted at gunpoint from his hotel room at Harrah's Casino and taken to Canoga Park, an area of Southern California's San Fernando Valley. After the brief conversation between father and son, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $240,000A plane crash in Madison, Wisconsin, kills soul singer Otis Redding and members of the Bar-Kays band on this day in 1967. The plane crashed into Lake Monona, several miles from the Madison airport.On this day in 1993, Wayne's World 2--the sequel to the 1992 hit comedy starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey as a pair of long-haired, heavy-metal-loving slackers who produce a cable access TV show from their basement--opens in theaters.On this day in 1830, Emily Dickinson is born in Amherst, Massachusetts.After three years of war, during which there had been no Nobel Peace Prize awarded, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the 1917 prize to the International Committee of the Red Cross.Motivated more by interest in free publicity than a commitment to gender equality, Wyoming territorial legislators pass a bill that is signed into law granting women the right to vote.history.com

 

[omeg]

I am a HUGE Otis Redding fan gang, and today is the day we lost him to a plane crash.   So many of the wonderful stars we had, we lost to soon.

 I truely feel the loss, although I never met Otis of course, his music brings so much joy to my life.  I consider him a friend.  Thanks for letting me share gang......If you have never experienced Otis, please listen and enjoy. Here's to you Otis, Because of your music, you will continue to live forever. [video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nA18g_PwG0][video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTMuwUe4YhE]When he left his final recording session in Memphis, Otis Redding intended to return soon to the song he'd been working onhe still had to replace a whistled verse thrown in as a placeholder with additional lyrics that he'd yet to write. In the meantime, however, there was a television appearance to make in Cleveland, followed by a concert in Madison, Wisconsin. On its final approach to Madison on this day in 1967, however, the private plane carrying soul-music legend Otis Redding would crash into the frigid waters of a small lake three miles short of the runway, killing seven of the eight men aboard, including Redding. Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay would be released in its unfinished form several weeks later, with Redding's whistled verse a seemingly indispensable part of the now-classic record. It would soon become history's first posthumous #1 hit and the biggest pop hit of Redding's career.[/video][/video]

 

[omeg]

12/11After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. He chose to abdicate after the British government, public, and the Church of England condemned his decision to marry the American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson. On the evening of December 11, he gave a radio address in which he explained, I have found it impossible to carry on the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge the duties of king, as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love. On December 12, his younger brother, the duke of York, was proclaimed King George VI.On December 11, 1962, the New York City Board of Estimate unanimously votes against a plan for a $100 million elevated expressway across the bottom of Manhattan. The road, known as the Lower Manhattan Expressway, had been in the works since 1941. It was supposed to link the Holland Tunnel on the city's West Side with the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges on the east side, slicing right through the neighborhoods now known as TriBeCa and SoHo.Hugh Scrutton is killed in his computer store in Sacramento, California, by a mail package that explodes in his hands. By the time he was finally apprehended, the Unabomber so named because his earliest attacks were directed at universitieshad been responsible for the deaths of 3 people and the injuries of 23 others.The city of Toronto, Canada, is battered with its worst-ever snowfall on this day in 1944. Twenty-one people died as a result of the record storm, in which nearly 20 inches of snow fell in a single day.In the aftermath of World War II, the General Assembly of the United Nations votes to establish the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), an organization to help provide relief and support to children living in countries devastated by the war.On December 11, 1964, in response to a reported shooting, officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were dispatched to the Hacienda Motel, where they found Sam Cooke dead on the office floor, shot three times in the chest by the motel's manager, Bertha Franklin. The authorities ruled Cooke's death a case of justifiable homicide, based on the testimony of Ms. Franklin, who claimed that Cooke had threatened her life after attempting to rape a young woman with whom he had earlier checked in. [video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX6QlnlMqjE]On this day in 1981, the Jamaican boxer Trevor Berbick beat former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali in a unanimous 10-round decision, before a crowd of 10,000 at the Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre in Nassau, the Bahamas.The ferry carrier, USNS Core, arrives in Saigon with the first U.S. helicopter unit. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.history.com[/video]

 

[omeg]

12/12..........On this day in 1980, American oil tycoon Armand Hammer pays $5,126,000 at auction for a notebook containing writings by the legendary artist Leonardo da Vinci.On this day in 1787, Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the Constitution, by a vote of 46 to 23. Pennsylvania was the first large state to ratify, as well as the first state to endure a serious Anti-Federalist challenge to ratification. On this day in 2000, General Motors declares that it will begin to phase out the 103-year-old Oldsmobile, the oldest automotive brand in the United States. Oldsmobile had once been one of the most venerable and innovative American brands--Olds cars were the first to have decorative chrome trim, for example, and the first to have fully automatic transmissions--but a GM reorganization in the mid-1980s had drained the brand of most of its unique identity.Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. The message--simply the Morse-code signal for the letter s --traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada. Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Mona Lisa is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia's hotel room in Florence. Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as Louvre janitors on the morning of August 21, 1911.In Omaha, Nebraska, Father Edward J. Flanagan, a 31-year-old Irish priest, opens the doors to a home for troubled and neglected children, and six boys enter to seek a better life. Flanagan, who previously ran the Workingmen's Hotel, a haven for down-and-out workers in Omaha, understood that mistreated or orphaned children were at high risk of turning to delinquency and crime in later years.While Motown Records founder Berry Gordy surely deserves credit for establishing the creative philosophy and business strategy that turned his Detroit-based company into a hit-making machine in the 1960s, the inner workings of that machine during the company's early years depended almost as much on the talents of a young man named William Robinson, Jr., better known to the world as Smokey.   Even if he'd never sung on a single Motown record, Smokey Robinson would still be regarded as one of the label's most important figures purely on the basis of his production and songwriting work for acts like Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye and The Temptations. But Smokey Robinson did sing, of course, in his trademark falsetto, on some of Motown's most beloved records: Shop Around (1960); You Really Got A Hold On Me (1962); I Second That Emotion (1967), to name only a few. After more than a decade of hits like these that never quite made it to the top of the charts, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles finally earned their first #1 hit when Tears Of A Clown topped the Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1970. [video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zww7FQILQec]On this day in 1963, a vinyl long-playing record ( LP ) called John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Memorial Album sets a record for album sales. A total of 4 million copies sold in the first six days of its release.On this day in 1965, the rookie running back Gale Sayers of the Chicago Bears scores six touchdowns during a single game against the San Francisco 49ers at Chicagos Wrigley Field, tying the National Football League (NFL) record for most touchdowns in a single game.[/video]

 

[omeg]

12/14..........Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott.On this day in 1909, workers place the last of the 3.2 million 10-pound bricks that pave the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana (a town surrounded by the city of Indianapolis). Since then, most of that brick has been buried under asphalt, but one yard remains exposed at the start-finish line. Kissing those bricks after a successful race remains a tradition among Indy drivers.On this day in 1967, record snow continues to fall in New Mexico in a blizzard that eventually kills 51 people. In December of that year, snow fell almost constantly in the northern part of the state for two weeks, piling up to five feet in some areas.George Washington, the American revolutionary leader and first president of the United States, dies of acute laryngitis at his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was 67 years old.On this day in 2005, King Kong, a remake of the classic 1933 film of the same name about a fictional giant ape who climbs New York Citys Empire State Building, opens in theaters.In a 2008 interview on BBC Radio 4, Robin Gibb confessed to making it through only the first 30 minutes of the world premiere, and to never having seen the rest of the picture in the decades that followed. Millions of Americans did, however, make it through the film that made a movie star out of 23-year-old John Travolta and propelled the already famous Mr. Gibb, along with his brothers Maurice and Barry, to a level of superstardom rarely achieved before or since. The film, of course, was Saturday Night Fever, a pop-cultural juggernaut that had its world premiere at Mann's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on this day in 1977. In a public exchange of letters with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, President John F. Kennedy formally announces that the United States will increase aid to South Vietnam, which would include the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment. Kennedy, concerned with the recent advances made by the communist insurgency movement in South Vietnam wrote, We shall promptly increase our assistance to your defense effort. history.com

 

[omeg]

12/15......On this day in 2001, Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to fortify the tower without eliminating its famous lean.On this day in 1791, Virginia becomes the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence. Before the Massachusetts ratifying convention would accept the Constitution, which they finally did in February 1788, the document's Federalist supporters had to promise to create a Bill of Rights to be amended to the Constitution immediately upon the creation of a new government under the document.On this day in 1896, the U.S. government awards Patent Number 573,174 to inventor Stephen M. Balzer for a gasoline-powered motor buggy that he built two years earlier. Balzer never mass-produced any of his cars, but his experimental vehicle was one of the first functioning automobiles to be built in the United States. Today, the Balzer car is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It was the first gas-powered car in the museum's collection.Legendary singer James Brown, also known as the Godfather of Soul and the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, becomes inmate number 155413 at the State Park Correctional Institute in South Carolina. Brown had had several run-ins with the law during the summer of 1988 that landed him on probation, but his reckless spree on September 24 resulted in numerous criminal charges, including assault and battery with intent to kill.Flooding and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rains on this day in 1999 kill thousands in Venezuela. Another 350,000 people, mostly the very poor, were left homeless from the terrible storm.In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler's final solution of the Jewish question, is condemned to death by an Israeli war crimes tribunal.Jean Paul Getty III, the grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, five months after his kidnapping by an Italian gang. J. Paul Getty, who became the richest man in the world in 1957, had initially refused to pay his 16-year-old grandson's $17 million ransom but finally agreed to cooperate after the boy's severed right ear was sent to a newspaper in Rome. He eventually secured his grandson's release by paying just $2.7 million, the maximum amount that he claimed he was able to raise.On this day in 1993, Schindlers List, starring Liam Neeson in the true story of a German businessman who saves the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust, opens in theaters. The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and took home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. It was the first Best Director win for Spielberg, who had been nominated in the category for three of his earlier films: 1977s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1981s Raiders of the Lost Ark and 1982s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Schindlers List was adapted from Thomas Keneallys 1982 book Schindlers Ark, about the Catholic businessman Oskar Schindler, who saved a large number of Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in a factory that made supplies for the German army. The film co-starred Ben Kingsley as Schindlers Jewish accountant and Ralph Fiennes as an evil Nazi officer.General James Doolittle of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), hero of the daring Doolittle Raid on mainland Japan and later the unified commander of Allied air forces in Europe in World War II, offered the following high praise to one of his staff officers in 1944: Next to a letter from home, Captain Miller, your organization is the greatest morale builder in the European Theater of Operations. The Captain Miller in question was the trombonist and bandleader Glenn Miller, the biggest star on the American pop-music scene in the years immediately preceding World War II and a man who set aside his brilliant career right at its peak in 1942 to serve his country as leader of the USAAF dance band. It was in that capacity that Captain Glenn Miller boarded a single-engine aircraft at an airfield outside of London on December 15, 1944an aircraft that would go missing over the English Channel en route to France for a congratulatory performance for American troops that had recently helped to liberate Paris.  On this day in 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary releases a 265-page report recommending the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors.President Richard Nixon announces that 50,000 additional U.S. troops will be pulled out of South Vietnam by April 15, 1970. This was the third reduction since the June Midway conference, when Nixon announced his Vietnamization program.history.com

 

[omeg]

12/16......In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.On December 16, 1979, the night before the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' annual price-setting meeting in Caracas, two member states (Libya and Indonesia) announce plans to raise the price of their oil by $4 (Libya) and $2 (Indonesia) per barrel. (The resulting prices--$30 and $25.50 per barrel, respectively--were among the highest they had ever been.) These diplomatic maneuverings were intended to keep OPEC's price hawks from raising them even further; nevertheless, by the end of 1979 the cost of oil had more than doubled since the end of the previous year.On this day in 1960, two airplanes collide over New York City, killing 134 people on the planes and on the ground. The improbable mid-air collision is the only such accident to have occurred over a major city in U.S. history.In the Mississippi River Valley near New Madrid, Missouri, the greatest series of earthquakes in U.S. history begins when a quake of an estimated 8.6 magnitude on the Richter scale slams the region. Although the earthquake greatly altered the topography of the region, the area was only sparsely inhabited at the time, and there were no known human fatalities.One of the deadliest earthquakes in history hits the Gansu province of midwestern China, causing massive landslides and the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people. The earthquake, which measured 8.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, affected an area of some 25,000 square miles, including 10 major population centers.On this day in 1977, Saturday Night Fever, a movie that ignites the disco dance craze across America, along with the movie career of its star, John Travolta, opens in theaters. Travolta earned a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his performance as 19-year-old Tony Manero, who during the week toils in a Brooklyn, New York hardware store and on the weekend dons a white suit and becomes king of a discotheque called 2001 Odyssey. Tony takes great care in his appearance, at one point during the film uttering the now-famous line: Would ya just watch the hair. Ya know, I work on my hair a long time and you hit it. He hits my hair. Music played an essential role in Saturday Night Fever, and the films soundtrack, which featured a number of songs by the Bee Gees, including Stayin Alive, Night Fever, How Deep is Your Love and Jive Talkin, became one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time. Saturday Night Fever was one of Gene Siskels favorite films. The prominent film critic (who died in 1999) reportedly watched the movie at least 17 times and even purchased the now-iconic white polyester suit Travolta wore while strutting across the lighted dance floor.[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69VsAEafSgM]On this day in 1998, President Bill Clinton announces he has ordered air strikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors. Clinton's decision did not have the support of key members of Congress, who accused Clinton of using the air strikes to direct attention away from ongoing impeachment proceedings against him. Just the day before, the House of Representatives had issued a report accusing Clinton of committing high crimes and misdemeanors related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which Clinton had--and then lied about--an illicit sexual liaison with an intern in the Oval Office.On December 16, 1973, the Buffalo Bills running back Orenthal James OJ Simpson becomes the first player in the National Football League (NFL) to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a single season.[/video]

 

[omeg]

12/17Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.On this day in 1777, the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, count of Vergennes, officially acknowledges the United States as an independent nation. News of the Continental Army's overwhelming victory against the British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga gave Benjamin Franklin new leverage in his efforts to rally French support for the American rebels. Although the victory occurred in October, news did not reach France until December 4th. On December 17, 1979, Hollywood stuntman Stan Barrett blasts across a dry lakebed at California's Edwards Air Force Base in a rocket- and missile-powered car, becoming the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound on land. He did not set an official record, however. The radar scanner was acting up, and so Barrett's top speed--739.666 miles per hour by the most reliable measure--was only an estimate. Also, he only drove his rocket car across the lakebed once, not twice as official record guidelines require. And, none of the spectators heard a sonic boom as Barrett zoomed across the course.On this day in 1961, a fire at a circus in Brazil kills more than 300 people and severely burns hundreds more. The cause of the fire was never conclusively determined but it may have been the result of sparks from a train passing nearby.A federal jury in Sacramento, California, sentences Lynette Alice Fromme, also known as Squeaky Fromme, to life in prison for her attempted assassination of President Gerald R. Ford.On this day in 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final film in the trilogy based on the best-selling fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, opens in theaters. The film was a huge box-office success and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, for Peter Jackson. The Lord of the Rings trilogy became one of the highest-grossing franchises in movie history, netting billions of dollars worldwide in box-office proceeds and related merchandise.On this day in 1843, Charles Dickens' classic story A Christmas Carol is publishedOn December 17, 2000, during a 17-0 victory by the San Francisco 49ers over the Chicago Bears, San Franciscos wide receiver Terrell Owens sets a new league record of 20 catches in a single game.history.com

 

[omeg]

On December 18, 1620, passengers on the British ship Mayflower come ashore at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony. On this day in 1968, the musical film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opens in New York City. The movie featured Dick Van Dyke, who had made a splash four years before in the Disney musical Mary Poppins and whose eponymous TV show had been a hit since 1961. Its real star, however, was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang herself: a magical flying car that always knew how to save the day. A power plant fire begins in Venezuela on this day in 1982. By the time it ended, the fire killed 128 people and injured hundreds more. Half the capital city of Caracas lost electrical power and 40,000 people had to be evacuated. The U.S. House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. It read, Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The Soviet Union's first McDonald's fast food restaurant opens in Moscow. Throngs of people line up to pay the equivalent of several days' wages for Big Macs, shakes, and french fries. On this day in 1953, flooding in the North Sea kills more than 1,500 people in the Netherlands and destroys 1 million acres of farmland. The storm also caused death and destruction in Great Britain and Belgium. Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned mission to the moon. On February 5, after suffering some initial problems in docking the lunar and command modules, Shepard and Mitchell descended to the lunar surface on the third U.S. moon landing. Upon stepping out of the lunar module, Shepard, who in 1961, aboard Freedom 7, was the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon. Shepard and Mitchell remained on the lunar surface for nearly 34 hours, conducting simple scientific experiments, such as hitting golf balls into space with Shepard's golf club, and collecting 96 pounds of lunar samples. On February 9, Apollo 14 safely returned to Earth. On January 31, 1988, in San Diego, California, Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins becomes the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, scoring four of Washingtons five touchdowns in an upset 42-10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII. 1991 General Motors announces closing of 21 plants1987 Ivan F. Boesky sentenced to 3 years for insider trading1976 Wonder Woman debuts on ABC1961 Wilt Chamberlain of NBA Philadelphia Warriors scores 78 points vs LA1960 General Meeting of United Nations condemns apartheid History.com/brainyhistory.com

 

[omeg]

December 19th........ After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term. A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, kills 239 workers on this day in 1907. Only one worker in the deep mine at the time survived the tragedy. The Apollo lunar-landing program ends on December 19, 1972, when the last three astronauts to travel to the moon splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 17 had lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 days before. On this day in 1997, director James Camerons epic drama Titanic, the story of the real-life luxury ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew, opens in theaters; it will go on to become the highest-grossing movie in history. Titanic catapulted its young stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to international fame and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Music (for the song My Heart Will Go On, sung by Celine Dion). The film also immortalized the line Im the king of the world!--which Cameron famously repeated during the Oscar ceremony, as he picked up his gold statuette for Best Director. On this day in 1917, four teams of the National Hockey League (NHL) play in the fledgling leagues first two games. At the time of its inception, the NHL was made up of five franchises: the Canadiens and the Wanderers (both of Montreal), the Ottawa Senators, the Quebec Bulldogs and the Toronto Arenas. The Montreal teams won two victories that first day, as the Canadiens beat Ottawa 7-4 and the Wanderers triumphed over Toronto 10-9. On this day, in a major shake-up of the military high command, Adolf Hitler assumes the position of commander in chief of the German army.history.com

 

[omeg]

December 20th..On this day in 1957, while spending the Christmas holidays at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley receives his draft notice for the United States Army.  [video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkyjCJvHLsA]More than two years after the Berlin Wall was constructed by East Germany to prevent its citizens from fleeing its communist regime, nearly 4,000 West Berliners are allowed to cross into East Berlin to visit relatives. Under an agreement reached between East and West Berlin, over 170,000 passes were eventually issued to West Berlin citizens, each pass allowing a one-day visit to communist East Berlin.A passenger ferry collides with an oil tanker near Manila in the Philippines on this day in 1987, leaving 4,000 people dead. The ferry, the Dona Paz, was severely overcrowded, carrying more than twice its stated capacity, and nearly everyone on board was killed.The United States invades Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracy in Panama and endangering U.S. nationals. Noriega's Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered on January 3, 1990.On this day in 1989, Roger & Me, a documentary by Michael Moore about his quest to interview Roger Smith, who was then chairman and chief executive officer of General Motors, opens in theaters. The film examines the devastating impact on the people of Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan, following the closing of several General Motors auto plants in the area. Roger & Me launched Moore's filmmaking career and became the top-grossing documentary in history, a record that would eventually be shattered by Moore's later movies, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.history.com[/video]

 

[omeg]

12/21.....On this day in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground. A bomb hidden inside an audio cassette player detonated in the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The disaster, which became the subject of Britain's largest criminal investigation, was believed to be an attack against the United States. One hundred eighty nine of the victims were American.An undersea earthquake on this day in 1946 sets off a powerful tsunami that devastates Honshu, Japan. About 2,000 people perished and half a million were left homeless. This was particularly devastating to a community that was already reeling from the horrors of World War II.Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard.In Vienna, Austria, Carlos the Jackal leads a raid on a meeting of oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). German and Arab terrorists stormed in with machine guns, killed three people, and took 63 people hostage, including 11 OPEC ministers. Calling his group the Arm of the Arab Revolution, Carlos demanded that an anti-Israeli political statement be broadcast over radio, and that a bus and jet be provided for the terrorists and their hostages. Austrian authorities complied, and all the hostages were released in Algeria unharmed. OPEC did not hold another summit for 25 years.Harry Chapin earned a reputation as a politically conscious singer-songwriter who dedicated himself, in the years before his untimely death, to various noble causes, including wiping out world hunger. Indeed, his greatest legacy may stem more from his charitable efforts than from his music itself, but for a brief period in the early 1970s, Harry Chapin was a legitimate pop star. On this day in 1974, he earned his one and only #1 pop hit when his bittersweet story-song Cat's In The Cradle reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.On this day in 1970, rock star Elvis Presley is greeted at the White House by President Richard M. Nixon. Presley's visit was not just a social call: He wanted to meet Nixon in order to offer his services in the government's war on drugs.history.com

 

[omeg]

On this day in 1956, a baby gorilla named Colo enters the world at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, becoming the first-ever gorilla born in captivity. Weighing in at approximately 4 pounds, Colo, a western lowland gorilla whose name was a combination of Columbus and Ohio, was the daughter of Millie and Mac, two gorillas captured in French Cameroon, Africa, who were brought to the Columbus Zoo in 1951. Before Colo's birth, gorillas found at zoos were caught in the wild, often by brutal means. In order to capture a gorilla when it was young and therefore still small enough to handle, hunters frequently had to kill the gorilla's parents and other family members.On this day in 1900, the first car to be produced under the Mercedes name is delivered to its buyer: Emil Jellinek, the Austrian car racer, auto dealer to the rich and famous, and bon vivant. Jellinek had commissioned the Mercedes car from the German company Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft. It was faster, lighter, and sleeker than any car the company had ever made before, and Jellinek was confident that it would win races so handily that besotted buyers would snap it up. (He was so confident that he bought 36 of them, paying D-M-G 550,000 marks in all.) In exchange for his extraordinary patronage, the company agreed to name its new machine after Jellinek's 11-year-old daughter, Mercedes.On this day in 1978, John Wayne Gacy confesses to police to killing over two dozen boys and young men and burying their bodies under his suburban Chicago home. In March 1980, Gacy was convicted of 33 sex-related murders, committed between 1972 and 1978, and given the death penalty. At the time, he was the worst serial killer in modern American history. George Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, overtook Gacy in November 2003, when he admitted to murdering 48 women in the Pacific Northwest.Two express trains collide in Magdeburg, Germany, killing more than 100 people on this day in 1939. Occurring at the outset of World War II, the accident was probably a result of the fact that the country's best rail engineers had all been conscripted into the military.On the New York City subway, Bernhard Goetz, a 45-year-old white male, shoots four young black men after they surround him and ask for $5. After wounding three of the unarmed men, Goetz pointed his gun at 18-year-old Darrell Cabey, who was not wounded but cowering terrified in the subway car, and said, You don't look too bad, here's another. Goetz then shot Cabey in the back, severing his spinal cord. Three of the youths recovered, but Cabey was paralyzed and suffered permanent brain damage.If the initial reviews failed to recognize it as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, one needs to understand the adverse conditions under which the work was first heard. The concert venue was freezing cold; it was more than two hours into a mammoth four-hour program before the piece began; and the orchestra played poorly enough that day to force the nearly deaf composeralso acting as conductor and pianistto stop the ensemble partway into one passage and start again from the very beginning. It was, all in all, a very inauspicious beginning for what would soon become the world's most recognizable piece of classical music: Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67the Fifth Symphony which received its world premiere on this day in 1808.On December 22, 1971, the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) defeat the Baltimore Bullets 127-120 in Baltimore for their 27th straight victory, breaking the previous record for the longest winning streak in professional sports. They had previously been tied with baseballs New York Giants, who won 26 games during the 1916 season.On this day, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C. for a series of meetings with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a unified Anglo-American war strategy and a future peace.history.com