Post by Salem6 on Dec 12, 2003 14:04:25 GMT
Today is Friday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2003. There are 19 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1574 - Murad III succeeds as Sultan of Turkey on death of Selim II.
1642 - Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.
1677 - Brandenburg's Frederick William I takes Stettin, Poland; Denmark's King Christian V is defeated by Swedish force at Cassel, Germany.
1742 - French forces evacuate Prague, Czechoslovakia, and return to France.
1800 - Washington DC is established as the capital of the United States.
1804 - Spain declares war on Britain.
1845 - Martin West takes office as first Lieutenant-Governor with responsibility for administrating Natal as a district of the Cape Colony.
1870 - Joseph H Rainey of South Carolina takes his seat in the US House of Representatives, becoming the first black congressman.
1875 - Sultan of Turkey promises reforms throughout Ottoman Empire to meet rebel demands.
1887 - Turkey appeals to Western powers to mediate its war with Russia.
1894 - Japanese troops invade Korea.
1899 - African American George Grant receives the first patent for a golf tee.
1905 - Russia's Czar Nicholas II grants constitution in Montenegro.
1913 - The Mona Lisa is recovered in Italy. It was stolen two years earlier from the Louvre museum in Paris.
1917 - Father Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town outside Omaha, Nebraska, which offers a home for abandoned and adrift boys.
1920 - Martial law is declared in Cork, Ireland.
1925 - The first motel - the "Motel Inn" - opens in San Luis Obispo, California.
1935 - Nationalists demand restitution of Egypt's Constitution of 1923.
1937 - Japanese aircraft sinks the US gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River. Japan later apologises and pays $2.2m in reparations.
1946 - A UN committee votes to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D Rockefeller Jr to be the site of UN headquarters.
1953 - US test pilot Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.3 (2.3 times the sound of speed) in a Bell X-1A rocket plane.
1955 - The Ford Foundation contributes $500m to US colleges and universities.
1962 - Twenty-nine people are killed and many injured when a crushing plant falls into a sinkhole at Carletonville.
1963 - Kenya becomes independent within British Commonwealth and a republic a year later.
1969 - Greece, under fire on charges of violating human rights, withdraws from the Council of Europe before it can be expelled.
1975 - Sara Jane Moore pleads guilty to trying to kill US President Gerald Ford; a group of generals, led by Maj Gen Chun Doo-hwan, stage an army coup in South Korea and seize power.
1985 - An Arrow Air charter crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killing 248 American soldiers and eight crew members.
1989 - British begin forced repatriation of Vietnamese refugees from camps in Hong Kong.
1990 - Bangladesh's deposed President Hossain Muhammad Ershad is put under house arrest.
1990 - The African National Congress Youth League approves a plan calling for the phased lifting of sanctions.
1991 - Boris Yeltsin wins landslide approval in Russian legislature for his new Commonwealth of Independent States.
1992 - A strong earthquake kills 2 500 people on Flores Island, eastern Indonesia; European Community leaders agree on a deal intended to keep Denmark and Britain in step on the road to union.
1993 - President Boris Yeltsin wins approval of his new constitution, but extreme nationalists and Communists make a strong showing in Russia's first multiparty elections since the 1917 Revolution.
1994 - The Brazilian supreme court acquits former President Fernando Collor de Mello of corruption charges.
1994 - Three Pan-Africanist Congress members are sentenced in the Cape Town Supreme Court to more than 20 years in prison for killing four people in Cape Town's Heidelberg Tavern in 1993. Two of the killers are sentenced to an effective 27 years' imprisonment each, and the third to 24 years in jail.
1995 - The United States approves the world's first drug to treat - but not cure - the degenerative nerve disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
1996 - Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Odai, is wounded when attackers ambush his car in Baghdad, Iraq.
1997 - Russia reaches an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for $1.7bn in loans, giving the state a chance to pay back wages to millions of public employees; Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal," goes on trial in Paris on charges of killing two French investigators and a Lebanese national. Convicted, he is serving a life prison sentence.
1998 - Marc Hodler, a longtime member of the International Olympic Committee's inner circle, details what he describes as systematic buying and selling of the Olympic Games.
1999 - A Maltese-registered tanker, the Erika, breaks in two during a violent sea storm off the northwest coast of France, spilling some three million gallons of heavy oil.
2000 - The US Supreme Court reverses the Florida Supreme Court's order to begin manual recounts of presidential votes in certain counties and Al Gore and concedes defeat to George Bush.
2001 - Gerardo Hernandez, the leader of the Cuban spy ring, receives a life sentence in a US district court for his role in the infiltration of US military bases and in the deaths of four Cuban-Americans whose planes were gunned down.
2002 - North Korea plans to resume operation of a nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that it had shut down in 1994. The reactor was deactivated as part of an agreement under which North Korea suspended its nuclear programs.
Today's Birthdays:
John Jay, US Supreme Court Justice (1745-1829); Gustave Flaubert, French author (1821-1880); Edvard Munch, Norwegian artist (1863-1944); John Osborne, English playwright (1929-1994); Frank Sinatra, US singer/actor (1915-1998); Bob Barker, US game show host (1923--); Jennifer Connelly, US actress (1970--).
Thought For Today:
There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness - Franz Kafka, Czech author (1883-1924). - Sapa-AP
Highlights in history on this date:
1574 - Murad III succeeds as Sultan of Turkey on death of Selim II.
1642 - Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.
1677 - Brandenburg's Frederick William I takes Stettin, Poland; Denmark's King Christian V is defeated by Swedish force at Cassel, Germany.
1742 - French forces evacuate Prague, Czechoslovakia, and return to France.
1800 - Washington DC is established as the capital of the United States.
1804 - Spain declares war on Britain.
1845 - Martin West takes office as first Lieutenant-Governor with responsibility for administrating Natal as a district of the Cape Colony.
1870 - Joseph H Rainey of South Carolina takes his seat in the US House of Representatives, becoming the first black congressman.
1875 - Sultan of Turkey promises reforms throughout Ottoman Empire to meet rebel demands.
1887 - Turkey appeals to Western powers to mediate its war with Russia.
1894 - Japanese troops invade Korea.
1899 - African American George Grant receives the first patent for a golf tee.
1905 - Russia's Czar Nicholas II grants constitution in Montenegro.
1913 - The Mona Lisa is recovered in Italy. It was stolen two years earlier from the Louvre museum in Paris.
1917 - Father Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town outside Omaha, Nebraska, which offers a home for abandoned and adrift boys.
1920 - Martial law is declared in Cork, Ireland.
1925 - The first motel - the "Motel Inn" - opens in San Luis Obispo, California.
1935 - Nationalists demand restitution of Egypt's Constitution of 1923.
1937 - Japanese aircraft sinks the US gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River. Japan later apologises and pays $2.2m in reparations.
1946 - A UN committee votes to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D Rockefeller Jr to be the site of UN headquarters.
1953 - US test pilot Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.3 (2.3 times the sound of speed) in a Bell X-1A rocket plane.
1955 - The Ford Foundation contributes $500m to US colleges and universities.
1962 - Twenty-nine people are killed and many injured when a crushing plant falls into a sinkhole at Carletonville.
1963 - Kenya becomes independent within British Commonwealth and a republic a year later.
1969 - Greece, under fire on charges of violating human rights, withdraws from the Council of Europe before it can be expelled.
1975 - Sara Jane Moore pleads guilty to trying to kill US President Gerald Ford; a group of generals, led by Maj Gen Chun Doo-hwan, stage an army coup in South Korea and seize power.
1985 - An Arrow Air charter crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killing 248 American soldiers and eight crew members.
1989 - British begin forced repatriation of Vietnamese refugees from camps in Hong Kong.
1990 - Bangladesh's deposed President Hossain Muhammad Ershad is put under house arrest.
1990 - The African National Congress Youth League approves a plan calling for the phased lifting of sanctions.
1991 - Boris Yeltsin wins landslide approval in Russian legislature for his new Commonwealth of Independent States.
1992 - A strong earthquake kills 2 500 people on Flores Island, eastern Indonesia; European Community leaders agree on a deal intended to keep Denmark and Britain in step on the road to union.
1993 - President Boris Yeltsin wins approval of his new constitution, but extreme nationalists and Communists make a strong showing in Russia's first multiparty elections since the 1917 Revolution.
1994 - The Brazilian supreme court acquits former President Fernando Collor de Mello of corruption charges.
1994 - Three Pan-Africanist Congress members are sentenced in the Cape Town Supreme Court to more than 20 years in prison for killing four people in Cape Town's Heidelberg Tavern in 1993. Two of the killers are sentenced to an effective 27 years' imprisonment each, and the third to 24 years in jail.
1995 - The United States approves the world's first drug to treat - but not cure - the degenerative nerve disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
1996 - Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Odai, is wounded when attackers ambush his car in Baghdad, Iraq.
1997 - Russia reaches an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for $1.7bn in loans, giving the state a chance to pay back wages to millions of public employees; Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal," goes on trial in Paris on charges of killing two French investigators and a Lebanese national. Convicted, he is serving a life prison sentence.
1998 - Marc Hodler, a longtime member of the International Olympic Committee's inner circle, details what he describes as systematic buying and selling of the Olympic Games.
1999 - A Maltese-registered tanker, the Erika, breaks in two during a violent sea storm off the northwest coast of France, spilling some three million gallons of heavy oil.
2000 - The US Supreme Court reverses the Florida Supreme Court's order to begin manual recounts of presidential votes in certain counties and Al Gore and concedes defeat to George Bush.
2001 - Gerardo Hernandez, the leader of the Cuban spy ring, receives a life sentence in a US district court for his role in the infiltration of US military bases and in the deaths of four Cuban-Americans whose planes were gunned down.
2002 - North Korea plans to resume operation of a nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that it had shut down in 1994. The reactor was deactivated as part of an agreement under which North Korea suspended its nuclear programs.
Today's Birthdays:
John Jay, US Supreme Court Justice (1745-1829); Gustave Flaubert, French author (1821-1880); Edvard Munch, Norwegian artist (1863-1944); John Osborne, English playwright (1929-1994); Frank Sinatra, US singer/actor (1915-1998); Bob Barker, US game show host (1923--); Jennifer Connelly, US actress (1970--).
Thought For Today:
There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness - Franz Kafka, Czech author (1883-1924). - Sapa-AP