Also on this day
American Revolution
1783
On this day in 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, General George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Washington addressed the assembled Congress:
“Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with...
Automotive
1982
On this day in 1982, the Missouri Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) inform residents of Times Beach, Missouri that their town was contaminated when the chemical dioxin was sprayed on its unpaved roads, and that the town will have to be evacuated and demolished....
Civil War
1862
On this day in 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis declares Union General Benjamin Butler a felon and insists that he beexecuted if captured. Butler had earned few friends in New Orleans; indeed, his treatment of the city’s residents outraged most Southerners.The Union captured New Orleans in early 1862 and Butler...
Cold War
1968
The crew and captain of the U.S. intelligence gathering ship Pueblo are released after 11 months imprisonment by the government of North Korea. The ship, and its 83-man crew, was seized by North Korean warships on January 23 and charged with intruding into North Korean waters.The seizure infuriated U.S....
Crime
1984
Bernhard Goetz, who shot four young black men on a subway car the previous day, flees New York City and heads for New Hampshire after becoming the central figure in a media firestorm.
On the afternoon of December 22, Troy Canty, Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, and James Ramseur reportedly approached Goetz...
2009
On this day in 2009, Richard Heene, who carried out a hoax in which he told authorities his 6-year-old son Falcon had floated off in a runaway, saucer-shaped helium balloon, is sentenced to 90 days in jail in Fort Collins, Colorado. Heene’s wife Mayumi received 20 days of jail time...
Disaster
1972
On this day in 1972, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, kills more than 10,000 people and leaves 250,000 homeless.
The quake hit in the middle of the night and immediately destroyed nearly 75 percent of Managua. All electricity, gas, water, sewage and telephone lines were brought down so the only...
General Interest
1620
One week after the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth harbor in present-day Massachusetts, construction of the first permanent European settlement in New England begins.On September 16, the Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists–half religious dissenters and...
1948
In Tokyo, Japan, Hideki Tojo, former Japanese premier and chief of the Kwantung Army, is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II. Seven of the defendants were also found guilty of committing crimes against humanity, especially in regard to their systematic...
1986
After nine days and four minutes in the sky, the experimental aircraft Voyager lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load of fuel. Piloted by Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager was made mostly of plastic and stiffened...
Hollywood
1993
On this day in 1993, Philadelphia, starring the actor Tom Hanks in the first major Hollywood movie to focus on the subject of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), opens in theaters. In the film, Hanks played Andrew Beckett, a gay attorney who is unjustly fired from his job because he...
Literary
1912
On this day in 1912, the Parisian literary review, Nouvelle Revue Francaise, rejects an excerpt from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. When complete, the seven-volume novel will profoundly influence the development of the modern novel.
Marcel Proust was the first of two sons born to a well-to-do Parisian family...
Music
1959
On December 23, 1959, Chuck Berry is arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on charges relating to his transportation of a 14-year-old girl across state lines for allegedly “immoral purposes.”
“Never saw a man so changed,” is how the great Carl Perkins described the experience of touring England in 1964 alongside...
Old West
1829
Embarking on the second of three wide-ranging exploratory journeys in the West, Prince Paul Wilhelm of Wurttemberg leaves St. Louis and heads up the Missouri River.
Born near Stuttgart in southwestern Germany in 1797, Prince Paul (later the Duke) of Wurttemberg was the son of King Friedrich I. As the...
Presidential
1946
On this day in 1946, President Harry S. Truman appoints an amnesty board to review cases of conscientious objectors (CO’s) who were imprisoned after refusing to serve during World War II.
Truman’s predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, had pardoned select World War I “draft dodgers” in 1933. In preparation for the Second World...
Sports
1972
On December 23, 1972, in a controversial play that is known as the “Immaculate Reception,” rookie running back Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers grabs a deflected pass from quarterback Terry Bradshaw to score a touchdown, winning the game for the Steelers 13-7 over the Oakland Raiders.
The historic play took...
Vietnam War
1966
Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York and military vicar of the U.S. armed forces for Roman Catholics, visits U.S. servicemen in South Vietnam. In an address at mass in Saigon, Spellman said that the Vietnamese conflict was “a war for civilization—certainly it is not a...
1972
The East German Embassy and the Hungarian commercial mission in Hanoi are hit in the eighth day of Operation Linebacker II. Although there were reports that a prisoner of war camp holding American soldiers was hit, the rumor was untrue.
President Nixon initiated the full-scale bombing campaign against North Vietnam...
World War I
1915
Roland Leighton, the fiance of Vera Brittain, a nurse in the British Red Cross who will become a famous author and feminist after the war, dies of wounds sustained in battle at the Western Front in France.
Brittain, born in 1893, grew up as part of a prosperous family in the...
World War II
1944
On this day, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower endorses the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorizes his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.
Private...