This Week in History 12/5 – 12/11

This Week in History

December 5:

• Antibaptist Hans Schlaffer martyred for standing for the Gospel (1527)
• US President Polk triggers Gold Rush of 1849 by confirming gold discovery in California (1848)
• German physicist Albert Einstein granted a visa to enter America (1932)
• Prohibition in US ends when 21st Amendment ratified and 18th Amendment repealed (1933)
• US President Truman creates Committee of Civil Rights by Executive Order (1946)
• 500 Jews of Nuremberg massacred during Black Death riots (1349)
• Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman (771 AD)
• Televangelist Jim Bakker was charged by a federal grand jury with mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the public (1988)
• The French Franc is created (1360)
• Earthquake strikes Naples killing 35,000 (1856)

December 6:

• St. Nicholas died (341 AD)
• US Civil War: 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery (1865)
• First recording made of the human voice – Thomas Edison reciting “Mary had a little lamb” (1877)
• Washington Monument completed (1884)
• NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars (2006)
• Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland for the second and and final time (1849)
• Thomas Aquinas had a vision of Christ (1273)
• Joseph H Rainey becomes first black in US House of Representatives (1870)
• First edition of Encyclopedia Britannica published (1768)
• Coal mine explosions in Monongah, West Virginia kill 361 (1907)
• Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated (1947)
• U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1790)
• China votes for universal human rights (1912)
• Several villagers are shot dead during protests in Dongzhou, China (2005)
• First US Presidential address broadcast on radio by President Calvin Coolidge (1923)
• Hugo Chávez is elected President of Venezuela (1998)
• Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer first airs on TV (1964)
• NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars (2006)
• Cokesbury College, the first Methodist college in America, was founded (1787)

December 7:

• WW2: Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii killing 2,403 people and starting American involvement in World War 2 (1941)
• Delaware becomes first state to ratify the US constitution (1787)
• WW1: US becomes 13th country to declare war on Austria (1917)
• Naturalist Alexander von Humboldt reports his discovery of the decrease in intensity of Earth’s magnetic field from the poles to the equator (1804)
• Apollo 17, final manned lunar landing mission, launched (1972)
• Microwave oven patented (1945)
• The American Colony of Massachusetts suspended the Corporal Punishment Act of 1656 which had imposed harsh penalties on Quakers and other religious Nonconformists (1661)
• At the Synod of Rome, Cyril of Alexandria formally condemned the doctrine which claimed there were two separate Persons in the Incarnate Christ – one Divine, the other Human (430 AD)
• Emperor Lo-Yang in China sees supernova (185 AD)

December 8:

• WW2: US declares war on Japan and enters war (1941)
• WW2: Great Britain declares war on Japan (1941)
• WW2: FDR makes famous date in infamy speech about Pearl Harbor attack (1941)
• The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of student organizations holding religious services at public colleges and universities (1981)
• George Washington’s retreating army crosses Delaware River from New Jersey possible only because an unusual fog covered the area (1776)
• WW2: Dutch government-in-exile in London declares war on Japan (1941)
• Ludwig Von Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in A premieres (1813)
• US President Reagan & Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev sign a treaty eliminating medium range nuclear missiles (1987)
• 114-day newspaper strike begins in New York City (1962)
• US Civil War: Abraham Lincoln’s Amnesty Proclamation and plan for Reconstruction of South (1863)
• Christmas seals were sold for the first time to fight tuberculous (1907)
• US & USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space (1966)
• Pope Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception of Mary an article of faith for the Catholic Church (1854)
• Sister Anthony, known as the Angel of the Battlefield for her service to the wounded during the Civil War, passed away (1897)
• Japanese military police launch violent suppression of the religious sect Oomoto for worshiping figures other than the emperor (1935)
• US President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the UN in New York (1966)

December 9:

• WW2: Hitler orders US ships are to be torpedoed (1941)
• WW2: China declares war on Japan, Germany & Italy (1941)
• Robert Cushman preached first recorded and printed sermon on US soil (1621)
• UN General Assembly unanimously approves Convention on Genocide (1948)
• Scottish missionary explorer David Livingstone set sail on his first journey to Africa (1840)
• WW2: First US WW II bombing mission in Far East, Luzon, Philippines (1941)
• US Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress (1861)
• First Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in North America (1851)
• A Charlie Brown Christmas premieres (1965)
• Alfred Tennyson’s poem Charge of the Light Brigade published (1854)
• NLS, a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed, is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco (1968)
• Nicolae Ceaușescu becomes Communist President of Romania overthrown 1989 (1967)
• Noah Webster establishes New York’s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva (1793)

December 10:

• The Gift of the Magi, a short story by William Sydney Porter known as O. Henry, was first published (1905)
• Wyoming becomes first US territory to grant women right to vote (1869)
• Spanish-American War formally ended by the Treaty of Paris; US acquires Philippines, Puerto Rico & Guam (1898)
• Martin Luther publicly burned papal edict demanding he recant (1520)
• Isaac Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley (1684)
• Kaspar Schwenkfeld, German theologian and reformer who influenced Anabaptist, Pietism, and Puritans, died (1561)
• Massachusetts Bay becomes first American colonial government to borrow money (1690)
• Italian archaeologist Antonio Bosio, known as Columbus of the Catacombs, first descended into the subterranean Christian burial chambers located under the streets of Rome (1593)
• Nobel Peace Prize presented to Dr Martin Luther King Jr. in Oslo (1964)
• US Civil War: General Sherman’s armies reach Savannah & 12 day siege begins (1864)
• First Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Jean Henri Dunant, Frederic Passy (1901)
• Poet Emily Dickinson is born  (1830)
• Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie (1903)
• Albert Schweitzer receives Nobel Peace Prize (1954)
• Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson (1936)
• President Theodore Roosevelt becomes first American awarded Nobel Peace Prize (1906)
• Ruyard Kipling receives Nobel prize for literature (1907)
• First traffic lights are installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London (1868)
• WW2: 2nd part of Hitler’s Mein Kampf published (1926)
• 6-year old Donny Osmond’s singing debut on Andy Williams Show (1963)

December 11:

• 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock (1620)
• WW2: Germany & Italy declare war on USA (1941)
• Myles Standish and a group of 18 settlers are attacked by 30 Native Americans, which became known as the “First Encounter” (1620)
• Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne after the Church of England condemns his decision to marry to Wallace Simpson, an American divorcee (1936)
• WW2: Dutch government in London declares war on Italy (1941)
• WW2: Japanese occupy Guam (1941)
• WW2: Japanese attack Wake Island (1941)
• WW2: New anti-Jewish measures proclaimed in Poland (1939)
• English Puritans introduced the “Root and Branch” petition to Parliament demanding the English episcopacy, “with all its dependencies, roots and branches”, be abolished (1640)
• First recorded display of Aurora Borealis in north American colonies (1790)
• 13 black soldiers hanged for participation in Houston riot (1917)
• Indiana becomes 19th US state (1816)
• Colored moving pictures demonstrated at Madison Square Garden (1909)
• Magnum P.I. premieres on CBS (1980)