This Day In History

November 28 -

1868 - Mt. Etna in Sicily violently erupts

1925 - The forerunner of the Grand Ole Opry, called the WSM Barn Dance, airs for the first time in Nashville, Tennessee

1941 - The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise departs from Pearl Harbor to deliver F4F Wildcat fighters to Wake Island. This mission saves the carrier from destruction when the Japanese attack.

1948 - Dr. Edwin Land’s first Polaroid cameras go on sale in Boston

November 29

1877 Thomas Edison demonstrates hand-cranked phonograph.





1890 1st Army-Navy football game, Score: Navy 24, Army 0 at West Point.





1942 U.S. rations coffee during WWII.





1944 John Hopkins hospital performs 1st open heart surgery.





1948 "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie" debuted on NBC.

November 29 -

1760 - Major Roger Rogers takes possession of Detroit on behalf of Britain

1929 - Commander Richard Byrd makes the first flight over the South Pole.

1972 - Atari announces the release of Pong, the first commercially successful video game

November 29

2001 - The music world mourned the loss of the "The quiet Beatle", George Harrison.

November 30

1630 16,000 inhabitants of Venice died of plague during November.







1887 1st indoor softball game (Chicago)





1956 Floyd Patterson KOs Archie Moore in 5 for heavyweight boxing title





1967 Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower announce their engagement





2012 Physics professor Enzo Di Fabrizio, of Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy, successfully takes the first direct photograph of DNA

November 30 -

1782 - The British sign a preliminary agreement in Paris, recognizing American independence

1956 - The United States offers emergency oil to Europe to counter the Arab ban

1982 - Thriller, Michael Jackson’s second solo album, released; the album, produced by Quincy Jones, became the best-selling album in history

1998 - Exxon and Mobil oil companies agree to a $73.7 billion merge, creating the world’s largest company, Exxon-Mobil

December 1

1167 Northern Italian towns form Lombard League.





1783 Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert ascend 2,000 feet in a hydrogen balloon.





1891 James Naismith creates the game of basketball.





1913 First drive-up gasoline station opens in Pittsburgh.





1942 Gasoline rationed in United States.

December 1 -

1881 - Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz

1955 - Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, defying the South’s segregationist laws.

1990 - Channel Tunnel sections from France and the UK meet beneath the English Channel.

December 2

1697 St. Paul's Cathedral opens in London





1816 1st savings bank in U.S. opens (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society)





1901 King Camp Gillette begins selling safety razor blades







1954 U.S. Senate censures Joe McCarthy, Senator-R-Wisconsin, for "conduct that tends to bring Senate into dishonor and disrepute"

December 2 -

1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral

1805 - Napoleon Bonaparte celebrates the first anniversary of his coronation with a victory at Austerlitz over a Russian and Austrian army.

1823 - President James Monroe proclaims the principles known as the Monroe Doctrine, "that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers."

1927 - The new Ford Model A is introduced to the American public

1982 - Dentist Barney Clark receives the first permanent artificial heart, developed by Dr. Robert K. Jarvik.

December 3

1621 Galileo invents telescope.





1775 1st official U.S. flag raising (aboard naval vessel Alfred)





1910 First Neon lights, (Paris Auto Show)





1922 1st successful technicolor movie (Toll of the Sea), shown in New York City




1931 Alka Seltzer goes on sale.






2014 Japan launches an explorer that will take samples and collect data from the surface of an asteroid; the six-year trip will include eighteen months of study and data collection.

December 3 -

1818 - Illinois admitted into the Union as the 21st state

1984 - Toxic gas leaks from a Union Carbide plant and results in the deaths of thousands in Bhopal, India.

1992 - A test engineer for Sema Group sends the world’s first text message, using a personal computer and the Vodafone network.

December 4

1783 General Washington bids officers farewell at Fraunce's Tavern, New York City.

"May ample justice be done them here, and may the choicest of Heaven's favors both here and hereafter attend those, who under the divine auspices have secured innumerable blessings for others: With these Wishes, and this benediction, the Commander in Chief is about to retire from service - The Curtain of seperation will soon be drawn - and the Military Scene to him will be closed for ever."






1867 Grange organized to protect farm interests. The Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, was founded in 1867 to advance methods of agriculture, as well as to promote the social and economic needs of farmers in the United States. The financial crisis of 1873, along with falling crop prices, increases in railroad fees to ship crops, and Congress’s reduction of paper money in favor of gold and silver devastated farmers’ livelihoods and caused a surge in Grange membership in the mid-1870s. Both at the state and national level, Grangers gave their support to reform minded groups such as the Greenback Party, the Populist Party, and, eventually, the Progressives.





1927 Duke Ellington opens at Cotton Club in Harlem. Ellington's orchestra began its four-year residency at Harlem's famous Cotton Club in 1927, providing music for sumptuous stage routines in which exotically dressed black dancers performed for an exclusively white audience. The band developed a new style of "jungle" music for these dances, which featured a growl technique of brass playing developed by trumpeter Bubber Miley and trombonist "Tricky Sam" Nanton. Ellington's other notable sidemen in these early years were alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges (famous for his sensuous tone), baritone saxophonist Harry Carney (whose agility on his potentially ponderous instrument was phenomenal) and clarinetist Barney Bigard (who personified a direct link with old New Orleans). In 1929, the virtuoso Cootie Williams succeeded Miley as principal trumpet. A succession of popular radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club brought Ellington national fame, and his name became known around the globe after the successes of "Mood Indigo" (1930) and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got that Swing)" (1932). In 1933 he took his band on their first tour of Europe.





1952 Killer fogs begin in London England, "Smog" becomes a word. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants mostly from the use of coal to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, and then dispersed quickly after a change of weather. Although it caused major disruption due to the effect on visibility, and even penetrated indoor areas, it was not thought to be a significant event at the time, with London having experienced many smog events in the past, so-called "pea soupers". Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up until 8 December 4,000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, at about 12,000.





2013 Yaya is a new island discovered in the Arctic Ocean's Laptev Sea. During a routine mission to transport military equipment unspecified equipment to the New Siberian Islands, two Russian helicopters made the discovery of a lifetime, stumbling across a previously unknown island within the icy waters of the Laptev Sea, some 250 km to the north of the harbor city of Tiksi.

December 4 -

1947 - Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire premieres on Broadway starring Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.

1992 - US Pres. George H. W. Bush orders 28,000 troops to Somalia during the Somali Civil War

December 5

1776 1st U.S. fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa (William and Mary College), forms.





1854 Aaron Allen of Boston patents folding theater chair.





1876 Daniel Stillson (Massachusetts) patents 1st practical pipe wrench.





1908 First football uniform numerals used (University of Pittsburgh)





1941 Sister Elizabeth Kenny new treatment for infantile paralysis approved.
During the polio epidemic of the 1940’s, mainstream treatment of flaccid paralysis by orthopedic surgeons involved tendon transplant, after which the limb was immobilized and placed in a cast for many months. Sister Kenny, an Australian nurse (not a nun) recognized the underlying disorder as muscle spasm and devised a successful treatment of flaccid paralysis with wool strip heat soaks, massage, and muscle exercises, the exact opposite of conventional orthopedic treatment of the time.. Compared to the dismal results obtained by immobilization, Kenney’s active treatment was enormously successful and she was brought to the US in Minnesota where she opened clinics which offered the Sister Kenny treatment for polio victims.

December 5 -

1484 - Pope Innocent VIII issues a bull deploring the spread of witchcraft and heresy in Germany.

1791 - Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies in Vienna at age 35.

1921 - The British empire reaches an accord with the Irish revolutionary group the Sinn Fein; Ireland is to become a free state

1933 - The 21st Amendment ends Prohibition in the United States, which had begun 13 years earlier

December 5, 1945

Flight 19 took off from Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station for a routine training mission over the Bermuda Triangle.
They were never seen again.

Ira Gershwin was born on December 6, 1896.


He was was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century including
"Embraceable You"
"I Got Rhythm"
"Love Is Here To Stay"
"They Can't Take That Away From Me"
"Someone to Watch Over Me"
"'S Wonderful"

December 6

1768 1st edition of "Encyclopedia Brittanica" published (Scotland)





1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland.


Tubman in 1887 (far left), with her husband Davis (seated, with cane), their adopted daughter Gertie (beside Tubman), Lee Cheney, John "Pop" Alexander, Walter Green, Blind "Aunty" Sarah Parker, and great-niece, Dora Stewart at Tubman's home in Auburn, New York



1969 300,000 attend Altamont California rock concert feature Rolling Stones




1992 300,000 Hindus destroy mosque of Babri India, 4 die





1995 Michael Jackson collapses while rehearsing for an HBO special.

December 6 -

1492 - Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Santo Domingo in search of gold.

1876 - Jack McCall is convicted for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and sentenced to hang

1877 - Thomas A. Edison makes the first sound recording when he recites "Mary had a Little Lamb" into his phonograph machine

1973 - US House of Representatives confirms Gerald Ford as Vice-President of the United States, 387–35.