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This Week In History: Decembe 13-19
Sunday, Dec. 13
1545 - Protestant princes opposing Holy Roman Emperor Charles V meet at Frankfurt.
1577 - Sir Francis Drake of England sets out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.
1642 - Dutch Mariner Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.
1789 - Austrian Netherlands declares independence as Belgium.
1808 - Madrid capitulates to Napoleon Bonaparte.
1862 - Confederate forces deal Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia during the American Civil War.
1877 - Urged by Russia, Serbia launches a new war against Turkey, aimed at winning the remaining Slav-populated areas in southern Balkans.
1897 - Russian forces occupy Port Arthur on Yellow Sea.
1916 - About 9,000 Austro-Hungarian troops are killed in avalanche in the Alps.
1918 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.
1921 - United States, Britain, France and Japan sign Washington Treaty to respect each others' rights over insular possessions in Pacific.
1928 - George Gershwin's 'An American in Paris' is publicly performed for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York.
1937 - Japanese troops take Nanking in China and proceed to massacre an estimated 300,000 Chinese civilians.
1944 - During World War II, the U.S. cruiser Nashville is badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze suicide attack that claims 138 lives.
1950 - South Africa refuses to place Southwest Africa under U.N. trusteeship.
1957 - An estimated 1,062 people are killed by an earthquake in western Iran. Farsinaj, a village at the epicenter of the temblor, is completely destroyed.
1967 - Military government in Greece crushes countercoup, and King Constantine flees to Rome with his family.
1969 - Britain announces agreement to withdraw all its forces from Libya within next few months.
1972 - U.S. Apollo 17 astronauts, on last U.S. moon mission, unveil plaque dedicated to peace on lunar surface.
1974 - Egypt demands 50-year freeze on Israel's population as condition for peace in Middle East.
1981 - Communist authorities impose martial law in Poland to crush the Solidarity labor movement. Martial law formally ends in 1983.
1989 - South African President F.W. de Klerk meets for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town.
1990 - African National Congress President Oliver Tambo arrives in South Africa after 30 years in exile; U.S. diplomats arrive in Frankfurt after four months holding out in the embassy in Kuwait City under Iraqi occupation.
1991 - Leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan agree that they will join new Commonwealth of Independent States.
1992 - Islamic militants kidnap an Israeli soldier in Lebanon and threaten to kill him if Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Hamas movement, is not freed from jail. The soldier is found dead two days later.
1994 - President Sam Nujoma and his governing party are declared winners of Namibia's first post-independence election.
Monday, Dec. 14
1542 - Accession of Mary Queen of Scots following the death of King James V.
1799 - George Washington, the first president of the United States, dies at his Mount Vernon, Virginia, home at age 67. (PHOTO)
1822 - Congress of Verona ends, ignoring Greek war of independence.
1877 - Serbia joins Russia in war on Turkey.
1911 - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes first man to reach South Pole.
1912 - Louis Botha resigns as South Africa's premier.
1913 - Greece formally annexes Crete.
1916 - People of Denmark vote to sell Danish West Indies to United States for $25 million.
1918 - Sidonio Paes, President of Portugal, is assassinated.
1927 - Britain recognizes Iraq's independence; China and Soviet Union break relations.
1937 - Japan establishes puppet Chinese government in Peking — now Beijing.
1939 - The Soviet Union is dropped from the League of Nations.
1941 - U.S. Marines make stand in battle for Wake Island in Pacific during World War II.
1946 - U.N. General Assembly votes to establish U.N. headquarters in New York City.
1952 - Eighty-four Korean Communist prisoners interned on Pongam Island are killed during a riot after attempting to escape.
1958 - The United States, Britain and France reject Soviet demands that they withdraw their troops from West Berlin and agree to liquidate the Allied occupation in West Berlin.
1962 - North Rhodesia's first African-dominated government is formed under Kenneth Kaunda.
1967 - Israel submits to the United Nations a five-year plan to solve the Arab refugee problem conditioned on a general peace settlement between Israel and the Arab states.
1972 - U.S. Apollo 17 astronauts blast off from the moon after three days of exploration on lunar surface.
1977 - The South African government eases job restrictions on blacks.
1981 - Israel annexes Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967.
1985 - Wilma Mankiller becomes the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe, taking office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
1988 - Sixty more survivors are pulled from rubble of earthquake that rocked Armenia.
1989 - Opposition leader Patricio Aylwin is elected president in Chile's first free election since 1970.
1990 - In Hong Kong, 10 Vietnamese boat people set fire to themselves to protest a screening policy that could prevent them from settling in the West.
1991 - Former East German leader Erich Honecker, facing extradition to Germany and trial on manslaughter charges, is offered asylum in North Korea.
1992 - Easing a 17-year trade embargo, the United States allows its companies to sign contracts in Vietnam.
1994 - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic asks former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to mediate a lasting peace in Bosnia.
1995 - Heavy fighting erupts in Gudermes, Chechnya, when rebels disrupt Kremlin-imposed elections. At least 267 Chechen civilians are reported killed in the following 10 days.
1997 - Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says he is ready to re-establish dialogue with the United States, the first such statement since the 1979 revolution in Iran.
1998 - In the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Palestinian Council votes to revoke a paragraph in its charter that demanded the destruction of Israel.
1999 - U.S. and German negotiators agree to establish a fund of $5.2 billion for Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers.
2000 - Vladimir Putin, the first Russian president to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union, holds talks with Fidel Castro in Havana.
2001 - Israeli troops raid four Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, killing eight Palestinians and arresting dozens of suspected militants.
2002 - A ferry carrying 200 passengers capsizes near the coastal town of Robersport in northwest Liberia. At least 50 people died, and more than 100 others are missing.
2003 - Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf escapes an assassination attempt when a powerful bomb explodes on a bridge in Rawalpindi less than a minute after his motorcade crosses it.
2004 - Hundreds of Belgrade university students and other Serbs demonstrate in the capital to protest the election of Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo's new prime minister — a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader whom Serbs accuse of war crimes.
2008 - Voters in Turkmenistan cast ballots in a parliamentary election, the first since the death of dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in late 2006.
Tuesday, Dec. 15
1640 - The Duke of Braganca is crowned John IV, the first king of Portugal after 60 years of Spanish rule.
1711 - The plague breaks out in Copenhagen.
1791 - Sweden's King Gustavus III offers to head the crusade against France.
1806 - Napoleon Bonaparte enters Warsaw, Poland.
1890 - Chief Sitting Bull of the Sioux is killed during an attempt to arrest him by reservation police in the U.S. state of South Dakota.
1916 - The French defeat Germans in Battle of Verdun during World War I.
1939 - The motion picture 'Gone With the Wind' premieres in Atlanta, in the United States.
1944 - The plane carrying American bandleader Glenn Miller, a U.S. Army Major, disappears over the English Channel.
1952 - China rejects India's plan for Korean armistice.
1957 - The United Nations rejects Greece's proposal that Cyprus is entitled to self-determination.
1961 - Former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death in Jerusalem.
1965 - Two U.S. manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, maneuver to within 3 meters (10 feet) of each other while in orbit and relay data about Venus as it flies past the planet.
1970 - Soviet spacecraft starts sending messages from planet Venus.
1978 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year's Day and sever official relations with Taiwan.
1979 - The deposed Shah of Iran flies from the United States to "temporary" exile in Panama.
1986 - Rival ethnic groups battle in Karachi and set hundreds of homes and shops ablaze in the city's worst rioting since Pakistan's independence 39 years earlier.
1988 - The U.N. General Assembly calls for convening of international Middle East peace conference.
1989 - Manuel Noriega is named head of government and declares Panama in "a state of war" with the United States; a popular uprising begins, resulting in the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
1990 - Cattle rancher Darly Alves da Silva and his son Darci Alves Pereira are convicted of murdering Brazilian rain forest defender Chico Mendes.
1991 - A ferry hits a reef and sinks off the Egyptian port of Safaga, killing nearly 500 people.
1992 - Chess genius Bobby Fischer is indicted in the United States on charges of violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing a highly publicized match with Boris Spassky.
1993 - Offering the Irish Republican Army a chance that "might never come their way again," British and Irish leaders sign a complex framework for negotiating peace in Northern Ireland.
1994 - The Swedish government decides not to salvage the bodies from the ferry Estonia, which sank in the Baltic, killing 800 people. The decision is opposed by the victims' relatives.
2006 - Japan's conservative government revises the country's central education law to require schools to encourage patriotism in the classroom and upgrades the Defense Agency to a full ministry for the first time since World War II.
Wednesday, Dec. 16
On Dec. 16, 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.
In 1653, Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.
In 1770, composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany.
In 1809, the French Senate granted a divorce decree to Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Josephine (the dissolution was made final the following month).
In 1859, Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the story-writing Brothers Grimm, died in Berlin at age 73.
In 1907, 16 U.S. Navy battleships, which came to be known as the "Great White Fleet," set sail on a 14-month round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.
In 1909, Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya resigned in the face of a U.S.-backed revolution.
In 1944, the World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise attack against Allied forces in Belgium (the Allies were eventually able to beat the Germans back).
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight "world conquest by Communist imperialism."
In 1976, the government halted its swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis apparently linked to the vaccine.
In 1991, the U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a vote of 111-25.
Ten years ago: Israel and Syria ended two days of inconclusive peace talks in Washington and agreed to resume early in the new year. A second day of torrential rains and mudslides plagued Venezuela's Caribbean coast; the disaster left thousands dead.
Five years ago: Bobby Jo Stinnett, 23, of Skidmore, Mo., was found dying in her home, her unborn baby cut from her womb (Lisa Montgomery was later convicted of kidnapping resulting in death, and was sentenced to death). Britain's highest court dealt a huge blow to the government's anti-terrorism policy by ruling that it could not detain foreign suspects indefinitely without trial. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein met with a lawyer for the first time since his capture a year earlier. Agnes Martin, one of the world's foremost abstract artists, died in Taos, N.M, at age 92.
One year ago: President-elect Barack Obama announced his choice of Arne Duncan to be his education secretary. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of Somalia. The Cleveland Clinic announced its surgeons had performed the nation's first near-total face transplant on a severely disfigured woman. (The woman, Connie Culp, went public with her identity in May 2009.) Police in Hollywood, Fla., closed their investigation into the 1981 abduction-slaying of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, saying a serial killer who'd died more than a decade earlier in prison was responsible.
Thursday, Dec. 17
On Dec. 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manpowered airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, N.C., using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.
In 1777, France recognized American independence.
In 1830, South American patriot Simon Bolivar died in Colombia.
In 1925, Col. William "Billy" Mitchell was convicted at his court-martial in Washington, D.C., of insubordination for accusing senior military officials of incompetence and criminal negligence; he was suspended from active duty.
In 1939, the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by its crew, ending the World War II Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.
In 1957, the United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
In 1959, Stanley Kramer's anti-nuclear war drama "On the Beach," starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, premiered on all seven continents (including Antarctica).
In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed its Project "Blue Book" by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.
In 1975, Lynette Fromme was sentenced in Sacramento, Calif., to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford. (She was paroled in August 2009.)
In 1979, in a case that aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, was fatally injured after leading police on a chase with his motorcycle in Miami. (Four white police officers accused of beating McDuffie were later acquitted, sparking riots.)
In 1989, the animated TV series "The Simpsons" premiered on Fox with a Christmas-themed episode.
Ten years ago: President Bill Clinton signed a law letting millions of disabled Americans retain their government-funded health coverage when they take a job.
Five years ago: President George W. Bush signed into law the largest overhaul of U.S. intelligence-gathering in 50 years. Pfizer Inc. said it had found an increased risk of heart problems with patients taking Celebrex.
One year ago: President-elect Barack Obama named former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado to head the Interior Department. OPEC agreed to slash 2.2 million barrels from daily production — its single largest cut ever. Pro Football Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh died in Rotan, Texas, at age 94.
Friday, Dec. 18
On Dec. 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward.
In 1787, New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1892, Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" publicly premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson, widowed the year before, married Edith Bolling Galt at her Washington home.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered secret preparations for Nazi Germany to invade the Soviet Union. (Operation Barbarossa was launched in June 1941.)
In 1944, in a pair of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans, but also said undeniably loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry could not continue to be detained.
In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first public, full-scale commercial nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line. (It was taken out of service in 1982.)
In 1958, the world's first communications satellite, SCORE, or Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment, nicknamed "Chatterbox," was launched by the United States aboard an Atlas rocket.
In 1969, Britain's House of Lords joined the House of Commons in making permanent a 1965 ban on the death penalty for cases of murder.
In 1972, the United States began heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets during the Vietnam War. (The bombardment ended 11 days later.)
In 1980, former Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin died at age 76.
Ten years ago: In St. Martinville, La., the last of the federal immigration detainees who'd taken a jail warden and three others hostage for almost a week surrendered. After living atop an ancient redwood in Humboldt County, Calif., for two years, environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill came down to earth, ending her anti-logging protest. French film director Robert Bresson died in Paris at age 98.
Five years ago: The former Iraqi general known as "Chemical Ali," Ali Hassan al-Majid, went before a judge in the first investigative hearings of former members of his regime. Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was hospitalized after suffering a stroke.
One year ago: A U.N. court in Tanzania convicted former Rwandan army Col. Theoneste Bagosora of genocide and crimes against humanity for masterminding the killings of more than half a million people in a 100-day slaughter in 1994. W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who'd revealed himself as "Deep Throat" three decades after the Watergate scandal, died in Santa Rosa, Calif., at age 95. "Star Trek" actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of series creator Gene Roddenberry, died in Los Angeles at age 76.
Saturday, Dec. 19
On Dec. 19, 1843, "A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens, was first published in England.
In 1777, Gen. George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pa., to camp for the winter.
In 1813, British forces captured Fort Niagara in upstate New York during the War of 1812.
In 1907, 239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pa.
In 1932, the BBC began transmitting overseas with its Empire Service to Australia.
In 1946, war broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.
In 1957, Meredith Willson's musical play "The Music Man" opened on Broadway.
In 1972, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, winding up the Apollo program of manned lunar landings.
In 1974, Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States.
In 1984 Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House for perjury and obstruction of justice (he was later acquitted by the Senate).
Ten years ago: Macau spent its last day under Portuguese control before being handed back to China, ending 442 years of colonial rule.
Five years ago: Time magazine named President George W. Bush its Person of the Year for the second time.
One year ago: Citing imminent danger to the national economy, President George W. Bush ordered an emergency bailout of the U.S. auto industry. An unwavering Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich served notice he had no intention of quitting over his corruption arrest, declaring: "I have done nothing wrong." Militants in Gaza fired rockets into Israel as Hamas ended a six-month truce.
AP
1545 - Protestant princes opposing Holy Roman Emperor Charles V meet at Frankfurt.
1577 - Sir Francis Drake of England sets out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.
1642 - Dutch Mariner Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.
1789 - Austrian Netherlands declares independence as Belgium.
1808 - Madrid capitulates to Napoleon Bonaparte.
1862 - Confederate forces deal Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia during the American Civil War.
1877 - Urged by Russia, Serbia launches a new war against Turkey, aimed at winning the remaining Slav-populated areas in southern Balkans.
1897 - Russian forces occupy Port Arthur on Yellow Sea.
1916 - About 9,000 Austro-Hungarian troops are killed in avalanche in the Alps.
1918 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.
1921 - United States, Britain, France and Japan sign Washington Treaty to respect each others' rights over insular possessions in Pacific.
1928 - George Gershwin's 'An American in Paris' is publicly performed for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York.
1937 - Japanese troops take Nanking in China and proceed to massacre an estimated 300,000 Chinese civilians.
1944 - During World War II, the U.S. cruiser Nashville is badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze suicide attack that claims 138 lives.
1950 - South Africa refuses to place Southwest Africa under U.N. trusteeship.
1957 - An estimated 1,062 people are killed by an earthquake in western Iran. Farsinaj, a village at the epicenter of the temblor, is completely destroyed.
1967 - Military government in Greece crushes countercoup, and King Constantine flees to Rome with his family.
1969 - Britain announces agreement to withdraw all its forces from Libya within next few months.
1972 - U.S. Apollo 17 astronauts, on last U.S. moon mission, unveil plaque dedicated to peace on lunar surface.
1974 - Egypt demands 50-year freeze on Israel's population as condition for peace in Middle East.
1981 - Communist authorities impose martial law in Poland to crush the Solidarity labor movement. Martial law formally ends in 1983.
1989 - South African President F.W. de Klerk meets for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town.
1990 - African National Congress President Oliver Tambo arrives in South Africa after 30 years in exile; U.S. diplomats arrive in Frankfurt after four months holding out in the embassy in Kuwait City under Iraqi occupation.
1991 - Leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan agree that they will join new Commonwealth of Independent States.
1992 - Islamic militants kidnap an Israeli soldier in Lebanon and threaten to kill him if Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Hamas movement, is not freed from jail. The soldier is found dead two days later.
1994 - President Sam Nujoma and his governing party are declared winners of Namibia's first post-independence election.
Monday, Dec. 14
1542 - Accession of Mary Queen of Scots following the death of King James V.
1799 - George Washington, the first president of the United States, dies at his Mount Vernon, Virginia, home at age 67. (PHOTO)
1822 - Congress of Verona ends, ignoring Greek war of independence.
1877 - Serbia joins Russia in war on Turkey.
1911 - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes first man to reach South Pole.
1912 - Louis Botha resigns as South Africa's premier.
1913 - Greece formally annexes Crete.
1916 - People of Denmark vote to sell Danish West Indies to United States for $25 million.
1918 - Sidonio Paes, President of Portugal, is assassinated.
1927 - Britain recognizes Iraq's independence; China and Soviet Union break relations.
1937 - Japan establishes puppet Chinese government in Peking — now Beijing.
1939 - The Soviet Union is dropped from the League of Nations.
1941 - U.S. Marines make stand in battle for Wake Island in Pacific during World War II.
1946 - U.N. General Assembly votes to establish U.N. headquarters in New York City.
1952 - Eighty-four Korean Communist prisoners interned on Pongam Island are killed during a riot after attempting to escape.
1958 - The United States, Britain and France reject Soviet demands that they withdraw their troops from West Berlin and agree to liquidate the Allied occupation in West Berlin.
1962 - North Rhodesia's first African-dominated government is formed under Kenneth Kaunda.
1967 - Israel submits to the United Nations a five-year plan to solve the Arab refugee problem conditioned on a general peace settlement between Israel and the Arab states.
1972 - U.S. Apollo 17 astronauts blast off from the moon after three days of exploration on lunar surface.
1977 - The South African government eases job restrictions on blacks.
1981 - Israel annexes Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967.
1985 - Wilma Mankiller becomes the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe, taking office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
1988 - Sixty more survivors are pulled from rubble of earthquake that rocked Armenia.
1989 - Opposition leader Patricio Aylwin is elected president in Chile's first free election since 1970.
1990 - In Hong Kong, 10 Vietnamese boat people set fire to themselves to protest a screening policy that could prevent them from settling in the West.
1991 - Former East German leader Erich Honecker, facing extradition to Germany and trial on manslaughter charges, is offered asylum in North Korea.
1992 - Easing a 17-year trade embargo, the United States allows its companies to sign contracts in Vietnam.
1994 - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic asks former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to mediate a lasting peace in Bosnia.
1995 - Heavy fighting erupts in Gudermes, Chechnya, when rebels disrupt Kremlin-imposed elections. At least 267 Chechen civilians are reported killed in the following 10 days.
1997 - Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says he is ready to re-establish dialogue with the United States, the first such statement since the 1979 revolution in Iran.
1998 - In the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Palestinian Council votes to revoke a paragraph in its charter that demanded the destruction of Israel.
1999 - U.S. and German negotiators agree to establish a fund of $5.2 billion for Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers.
2000 - Vladimir Putin, the first Russian president to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union, holds talks with Fidel Castro in Havana.
2001 - Israeli troops raid four Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, killing eight Palestinians and arresting dozens of suspected militants.
2002 - A ferry carrying 200 passengers capsizes near the coastal town of Robersport in northwest Liberia. At least 50 people died, and more than 100 others are missing.
2003 - Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf escapes an assassination attempt when a powerful bomb explodes on a bridge in Rawalpindi less than a minute after his motorcade crosses it.
2004 - Hundreds of Belgrade university students and other Serbs demonstrate in the capital to protest the election of Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo's new prime minister — a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader whom Serbs accuse of war crimes.
2008 - Voters in Turkmenistan cast ballots in a parliamentary election, the first since the death of dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in late 2006.
Tuesday, Dec. 15
1640 - The Duke of Braganca is crowned John IV, the first king of Portugal after 60 years of Spanish rule.
1711 - The plague breaks out in Copenhagen.
1791 - Sweden's King Gustavus III offers to head the crusade against France.
1806 - Napoleon Bonaparte enters Warsaw, Poland.
1890 - Chief Sitting Bull of the Sioux is killed during an attempt to arrest him by reservation police in the U.S. state of South Dakota.
1916 - The French defeat Germans in Battle of Verdun during World War I.
1939 - The motion picture 'Gone With the Wind' premieres in Atlanta, in the United States.
1944 - The plane carrying American bandleader Glenn Miller, a U.S. Army Major, disappears over the English Channel.
1952 - China rejects India's plan for Korean armistice.
1957 - The United Nations rejects Greece's proposal that Cyprus is entitled to self-determination.
1961 - Former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death in Jerusalem.
1965 - Two U.S. manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, maneuver to within 3 meters (10 feet) of each other while in orbit and relay data about Venus as it flies past the planet.
1970 - Soviet spacecraft starts sending messages from planet Venus.
1978 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year's Day and sever official relations with Taiwan.
1979 - The deposed Shah of Iran flies from the United States to "temporary" exile in Panama.
1986 - Rival ethnic groups battle in Karachi and set hundreds of homes and shops ablaze in the city's worst rioting since Pakistan's independence 39 years earlier.
1988 - The U.N. General Assembly calls for convening of international Middle East peace conference.
1989 - Manuel Noriega is named head of government and declares Panama in "a state of war" with the United States; a popular uprising begins, resulting in the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
1990 - Cattle rancher Darly Alves da Silva and his son Darci Alves Pereira are convicted of murdering Brazilian rain forest defender Chico Mendes.
1991 - A ferry hits a reef and sinks off the Egyptian port of Safaga, killing nearly 500 people.
1992 - Chess genius Bobby Fischer is indicted in the United States on charges of violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing a highly publicized match with Boris Spassky.
1993 - Offering the Irish Republican Army a chance that "might never come their way again," British and Irish leaders sign a complex framework for negotiating peace in Northern Ireland.
1994 - The Swedish government decides not to salvage the bodies from the ferry Estonia, which sank in the Baltic, killing 800 people. The decision is opposed by the victims' relatives.
2006 - Japan's conservative government revises the country's central education law to require schools to encourage patriotism in the classroom and upgrades the Defense Agency to a full ministry for the first time since World War II.
Wednesday, Dec. 16
On Dec. 16, 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.
In 1653, Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.
In 1770, composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany.
In 1809, the French Senate granted a divorce decree to Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Josephine (the dissolution was made final the following month).
In 1859, Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the story-writing Brothers Grimm, died in Berlin at age 73.
In 1907, 16 U.S. Navy battleships, which came to be known as the "Great White Fleet," set sail on a 14-month round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.
In 1909, Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya resigned in the face of a U.S.-backed revolution.
In 1944, the World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise attack against Allied forces in Belgium (the Allies were eventually able to beat the Germans back).
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight "world conquest by Communist imperialism."
In 1976, the government halted its swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis apparently linked to the vaccine.
In 1991, the U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a vote of 111-25.
Ten years ago: Israel and Syria ended two days of inconclusive peace talks in Washington and agreed to resume early in the new year. A second day of torrential rains and mudslides plagued Venezuela's Caribbean coast; the disaster left thousands dead.
Five years ago: Bobby Jo Stinnett, 23, of Skidmore, Mo., was found dying in her home, her unborn baby cut from her womb (Lisa Montgomery was later convicted of kidnapping resulting in death, and was sentenced to death). Britain's highest court dealt a huge blow to the government's anti-terrorism policy by ruling that it could not detain foreign suspects indefinitely without trial. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein met with a lawyer for the first time since his capture a year earlier. Agnes Martin, one of the world's foremost abstract artists, died in Taos, N.M, at age 92.
One year ago: President-elect Barack Obama announced his choice of Arne Duncan to be his education secretary. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of Somalia. The Cleveland Clinic announced its surgeons had performed the nation's first near-total face transplant on a severely disfigured woman. (The woman, Connie Culp, went public with her identity in May 2009.) Police in Hollywood, Fla., closed their investigation into the 1981 abduction-slaying of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, saying a serial killer who'd died more than a decade earlier in prison was responsible.
Thursday, Dec. 17
On Dec. 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manpowered airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, N.C., using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.
In 1777, France recognized American independence.
In 1830, South American patriot Simon Bolivar died in Colombia.
In 1925, Col. William "Billy" Mitchell was convicted at his court-martial in Washington, D.C., of insubordination for accusing senior military officials of incompetence and criminal negligence; he was suspended from active duty.
In 1939, the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by its crew, ending the World War II Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.
In 1957, the United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
In 1959, Stanley Kramer's anti-nuclear war drama "On the Beach," starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, premiered on all seven continents (including Antarctica).
In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed its Project "Blue Book" by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.
In 1975, Lynette Fromme was sentenced in Sacramento, Calif., to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford. (She was paroled in August 2009.)
In 1979, in a case that aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, was fatally injured after leading police on a chase with his motorcycle in Miami. (Four white police officers accused of beating McDuffie were later acquitted, sparking riots.)
In 1989, the animated TV series "The Simpsons" premiered on Fox with a Christmas-themed episode.
Ten years ago: President Bill Clinton signed a law letting millions of disabled Americans retain their government-funded health coverage when they take a job.
Five years ago: President George W. Bush signed into law the largest overhaul of U.S. intelligence-gathering in 50 years. Pfizer Inc. said it had found an increased risk of heart problems with patients taking Celebrex.
One year ago: President-elect Barack Obama named former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado to head the Interior Department. OPEC agreed to slash 2.2 million barrels from daily production — its single largest cut ever. Pro Football Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh died in Rotan, Texas, at age 94.
Friday, Dec. 18
On Dec. 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward.
In 1787, New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1892, Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" publicly premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson, widowed the year before, married Edith Bolling Galt at her Washington home.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered secret preparations for Nazi Germany to invade the Soviet Union. (Operation Barbarossa was launched in June 1941.)
In 1944, in a pair of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans, but also said undeniably loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry could not continue to be detained.
In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first public, full-scale commercial nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line. (It was taken out of service in 1982.)
In 1958, the world's first communications satellite, SCORE, or Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment, nicknamed "Chatterbox," was launched by the United States aboard an Atlas rocket.
In 1969, Britain's House of Lords joined the House of Commons in making permanent a 1965 ban on the death penalty for cases of murder.
In 1972, the United States began heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets during the Vietnam War. (The bombardment ended 11 days later.)
In 1980, former Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin died at age 76.
Ten years ago: In St. Martinville, La., the last of the federal immigration detainees who'd taken a jail warden and three others hostage for almost a week surrendered. After living atop an ancient redwood in Humboldt County, Calif., for two years, environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill came down to earth, ending her anti-logging protest. French film director Robert Bresson died in Paris at age 98.
Five years ago: The former Iraqi general known as "Chemical Ali," Ali Hassan al-Majid, went before a judge in the first investigative hearings of former members of his regime. Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was hospitalized after suffering a stroke.
One year ago: A U.N. court in Tanzania convicted former Rwandan army Col. Theoneste Bagosora of genocide and crimes against humanity for masterminding the killings of more than half a million people in a 100-day slaughter in 1994. W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who'd revealed himself as "Deep Throat" three decades after the Watergate scandal, died in Santa Rosa, Calif., at age 95. "Star Trek" actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of series creator Gene Roddenberry, died in Los Angeles at age 76.
Saturday, Dec. 19
On Dec. 19, 1843, "A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens, was first published in England.
In 1777, Gen. George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pa., to camp for the winter.
In 1813, British forces captured Fort Niagara in upstate New York during the War of 1812.
In 1907, 239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pa.
In 1932, the BBC began transmitting overseas with its Empire Service to Australia.
In 1946, war broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.
In 1957, Meredith Willson's musical play "The Music Man" opened on Broadway.
In 1972, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, winding up the Apollo program of manned lunar landings.
In 1974, Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States.
In 1984 Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House for perjury and obstruction of justice (he was later acquitted by the Senate).
Ten years ago: Macau spent its last day under Portuguese control before being handed back to China, ending 442 years of colonial rule.
Five years ago: Time magazine named President George W. Bush its Person of the Year for the second time.
One year ago: Citing imminent danger to the national economy, President George W. Bush ordered an emergency bailout of the U.S. auto industry. An unwavering Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich served notice he had no intention of quitting over his corruption arrest, declaring: "I have done nothing wrong." Militants in Gaza fired rockets into Israel as Hamas ended a six-month truce.
AP
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