Today is Wednesday, December 2, the 336th day of 2015. There are 29 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1790 – Austrian troops re-enter Brussels and suppress the revolution.
1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor of France in Paris, taking the crown from attending Pope Pius VII.
1815 – Britain and Rajah of Nepal sign a peace treaty.
1816 – The first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opens for business.
1823 – U.S. President James Monroe declares the Monroe Doctrine which opposes European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.
1848 – Austria’s Emperor Ferdinand I abdicates in favor of Franz Joseph I.
1851 – Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, president of France, suspends the constitution during a coup. Street fighting breaks out in Paris.
1852 – Second French Empire is proclaimed with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor Napoleon III.
1854 – Austria concludes alliance with Britain and France.
1856 – France and Spain reach agreement on their frontiers.
1920 – Armenia cedes territory to Turkey by Treaty of Alexandropol while communists seize power in Armenian capital Yerevan and proclaim a Soviet republic.
1942 – Nuclear chain reaction is demonstrated for the first time by scientists working on the Manhattan Project underneath the University of Chicago’s football stadium.
1950 – United Nations agrees to hand over Eritrea to Ethiopia.
1954 – U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy is censured by the Senate for browbeating Army personnel with his communist witch hunts.
1960 – The Archbishop of Canterbury visits Pope John XXIII. The heads of the two major religions break a 400-year-old tradition set in the 1500s by Britain’s King Henry VIII and Pope Leo X.
1961 – Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares himself a Marxist-Leninist who will lead Cuba to Communism.
1969 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its debut as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, fly from Seattle to New York City.
1971 – Britain terminates all treaties with Trucial States in the Gulf, leading to formation of United Arab Emirates.
1975 – Israeli jets carry out massive raids against Palestinian targets in southern and northern Lebanon, killing 91 people and wounding 150. .
1982 – In the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implant a permanent artificial heart. Barney Clark, a retired dentist, lives 112 days with the device.
1986 – More than 16,000 Hindus go on a rampage in New Delhi to protest Sikh terrorist killings in Punjab state.
1991 – Kidnappers release American Joseph Cicippio, held hostage in Beirut for more than five years.
1993 – Drug lord Pablo Escobar, one of the world’s most wanted men, is killed in a gunfight with security forces in Colombia, 16 months after he escaped from prison.
1994 – Ferry carrying more than 600 people collides with a freighter and sinks in Manila Bay, Philippines. Sixty bodies are recovered, 85 people are missing.
1995 – A Singapore court sentences former trader Nick Leeson to 6 1/2 years in prison in the crash of Britain’s oldest merchant bank.
2001 – Enron Corp., the largest United States energy-trading company, files for bankruptcy protection, dealing a blow to financial markets worldwide. It is the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
2006 – Fidel Castro fails to attend a military parade marking the 50th anniversary of the date he and his rebels launched their revolution, fueling speculation that the ailing Cuban leader may not return to power.
2009 – Iran’s president declares that his country will enrich uranium to a much higher level — a fresh rejection of an international plan to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.
2011 – Egypt’s ultraconservative Islamist party says it plans to push for a stricter religious code in Egypt after claiming surprisingly strong gains in the initial round of voting for parliament, the first elections since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.
2014 – Islamic militants kill 35 non-Muslims in northeastern Kenya, leading president to shake up his security staff. Today’s Birthdays:
Georges Seurat, French artist (1859-1891); George Richards Minot, U.S. physician/Nobel laureate (1885-1950); Otto Dix, German artist (1891-1969); Maria Callas, U.S. opera singer (1923-1977); Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer (1946-1997); Monica Seles, Yugoslav tennis player (1973–); Britney Spears, U.S. pop singer (1981–); Lucy Liu, U.S. actress (1968–).
Thought For Today:
When we cannot find contentment in ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere — Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, French author (1613-1680).
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