Today is Tuesday, Dec. 8, the 342nd day of 2015. There are 23 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1776 – George Washington’s retreating army crosses the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.
1794 – Girondists who survived the guillotine in French Revolution are admitted to the French National Convention.
1863 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln announces his plan for the Reconstruction of the South.
1914 – British destroy German naval squadron off Falkland Islands.
1925 – Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” is published.
1941 – The United States and Britain declare war on Japan; Japan invades Thailand.
1949 – U.N. General Assembly asks world powers to recognize political independence of China, as the Nationalist government moves from the mainland to Formosa and the Communists continue to press their attacks.
1953 – United States proposes in U.N. General Assembly to have international control of atomic energy.
1956 – Call for general strike in Hungary leads to martial law and mass arrests.
1962 – Brunei rebellion collapses after British intervention.
1964 – U.N. Security Council holds urgent session at request of 21 nations that criticized United States and Belgian operations to rescue hostages in the Congo.
1966 – Greek ferry sinks near Island of Melos, killing 234.
1970 – U.N. Security Council votes to condemn Portugal for military moves in Guinea.
1974 – Greece votes decisively to become a republic and eliminate monarchy, dating to 1832.
1980 – Rock musician John Lennon is shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by a fan.
1987 – The first Palestinian “Intifada,” or uprising against the Israeli occupation, begins in the Israeli-occupied territories.
1991 – Russia, Belarus and Ukraine declare the Soviet national government dead, forging a new alliance to be known as the Commonwealth of Independent States.
1995 – The World Health Organization announces that a new case of the Ebola virus has been confirmed in the Ivory Coast. Ebola killed 50 in Zaire earlier in 1995.
1996 – The Serbian Supreme Court rules against opposition parties who say Slobodan Milosevic robbed them of an election victory in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
2002 – The al-Qaida terrorist network claims responsibility for the November bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya that killed 16 people, and the failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane as it took off from Mombasa.
2005 – British prosecutors drop all charges against three men who were accused of spying on behalf of the Irish Republican Army, a 2002 scandal that destroyed power-sharing, the central accomplishment of Northern Ireland’s peace accord.
2006 – Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, a longtime Washington ally, angrily rejects the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, warning that any delay in deciding the fate of an oil-rich region claimed by the Kurds would have “grave consequences.”
2007 – Gunmen kill three people in an attack on a party office of Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
2010 – Hackers rush to the defense of WikiLeaks, launching attacks on MasterCard, Visa, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange.
2012 – Premier Mario Monti, an unelected economist who pulled Italy back from the brink of financial disaster, tells the country’s president he is resigning soon, saying he can no longer govern after Silvio Berlusconi withdrew crucial support.
2013 – North Korea acknowledges the purge of leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful uncle on allegations of corruption, drug use and a long list of other “‘anti-state” acts.
2014 — American and NATO troops close their operational command in Afghanistan, marking the formal end of their combat mission in a country still mired in war 13 years after the U.S. invasion.
Today’s Birthdays:
Horace, Roman poet (65 BC – 8 BC); Christina, queen of Sweden and patroness of European art (1626-1689); Eli Whitney, U.S. inventor of cotton gin (1765-1825); Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer (1865-1957); James Galway, Irish flutist and conductor (1939–); Kim Basinger, U.S. actress (1953–).
Thought For Today:
The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown
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