Today is Friday, Dec. 11, the 345th day of 2015. There are 20 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1769 – King Prithpi Narayan Shad creates a united nation of Nepal by capturing the last of its 24 states.
1792 – France’s King Louis XVI faces charges of treason. He is convicted, and executed the following month.
1816 – Britain restores Java, Indonesia, to the Netherlands.
1845 – Sikhs cross Sutlej River in India and surprise British, causing outbreak of Anglo-Sikh War.
1853 – Britain annexes Nagpur, one of India’s key states.
1872 – Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback becomes America’s first black governor in Louisiana.
1878 – French-British dual control in Egypt is suspended.
1888 – Italy supports Menelek of Shoa in revolt against Ethiopia’s Johannes IV; the French Panama Canal company fails.
1936 – George VI becomes King of England following abdication of Edward VIII.
1937 – Italy withdraws from the League of Nations.
1941 – United States declares war against Germany and Italy in World War II.
1946 – The U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.
1961 – Two U.S. helicopter companies arrive in Saigon on an aircraft carrier in the first direct U.S. military support for South Vietnam’s battle against Communist guerrillas.
1968 – U.S. and North Vietnamese representatives in Paris continue talks on the expanded Vietnam peace conference, but discussions remain deadlocked.
1972 – U.S. Apollo 17 astronauts land on the moon and begin an extensive exploration of the lunar surface.
1975 – Moroccan officials in El Aiun proclaim Morocco’s annexation of the Spanish Sahara as some 5,000 Moroccan troops march into the territory’s capital.
1981 – The U.N. Security Council chooses Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be the fifth secretary-general of the world body.
1990 – Albania announces it will allow formation of independent political parties.
1991 – Leaders of 12 European Community nations agree to establish loose federation with common foreign policy and single currency by 1999, laying the groundwork for the European Union.
1992 – The U.N. Security Council authorizes immediate deployment of up to 800 peacekeepers in Macedonia to prevent strife in the Balkans from engulfing a larger region.
1996 – Shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa is elected the first postcolonial leader of Hong Kong.
2001 – A U.S. federal grand jury indicts Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, for conspiracy in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the first indictment directly related to the attacks.
2003 – A presidential panel concludes that France should outlaw Islamic head scarves in public schools to halt the burgeoning influence of Islamic fundamentalism and save its secular values.
2006 – Thousands of mourners in Chile honor Gen. Augusto Pinochet, with many weeping openly in a military ceremony that exposes deep divisions over the legacy of his 17-year dictatorship.
2007 – Two truck bombs shear off the fronts of U.N. offices and a government building in Algeria’s capital, killing at least 31 people and wounding nearly 200 in an attack claimed by Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa.
2011 – Former military strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega is flown home to Panama to be punished once again for crimes he committed during a career that saw him transformed from a close Cold War ally of Washington to the vilified target of a U.S. invasion.
2013 — India’s Supreme Court strikes down a 2009 lower court decision to decriminalize homosexual contact, dealing a blow to gay activists who have fought for years for the chance to live openly in India’s deeply conservative society.
2014 — CIA director says agency officials did “abhorrent” thing to detainees but defends the overall post Sept. 11 interrogation program for stopping attacks and saving lives. c
Today’s Birthdays:
Hector Berlioz, French composer (1803-1869); Alfred de Musset, French author (1810-1857); Fiorello H. LaGuardia, New York City mayor (1882-1947); Carlos Gardel, Argentine tango singer (1887-1935); Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate (1911-2007); Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer and Nobel laureate (1918-2008); Rita Moreno, Puerto Rican actress (1931–).
Thought For Today:
Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad — Christina Rosetti, British poet (1830-1874).
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