| 1660 | The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) makes her debut as Desdemona. | |
| 1861 | CSS Sumter captures the whaler Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry. | |
| 1863 | Union General William Averell's cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia. | |
| 1914 | The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. | |
| 1920 | President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva. | |
| 1932 | Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China. | |
| 1941 | Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita begins his attack against the British army at Singapore. | |
| 1943 | U.S. carrier-based planes sink two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands. | |
| 1944 | The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. | |
| 1948 | The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea. | |
| 1967 | In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed. | |
| 1968 | South Vietnam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks. | |
| 1980 | John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building. | |
| 1982 | The Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument. |
Ezra Klein says that the shape of a fiscal cliff deal is clear: only a 37 percent rate on top incomes, and a rise in the Medicare eligibility age.And here’s Klein, from the article Krugman links to:
I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that this is just a case of creeping Broderism, that it’s a VSP fantasy about how we’re going to resolve this in a bipartisan way. Because if Obama really does make this deal, there will be hell to pay.
The fiscal cliff deal comes clearer: a 37% top tax rate and a higher Medicare eligibility age
[T]he headline Democratic concession is likely to be that the Medicare eligibility age rises from 65 to 67.Read the rest of Klein’s article to see why Obama is attracted to this offer. It’s stunning; look for the Jonathan Chait quote.
Bin Laden may be dead, but
Al-Qaeda is still a threat and analysts are watching Mali right now to
see if it becomes another Al-Qaeda hub. 
Two
linguists argue that modern English isn't really a West Germanic
language, most similar to modern German, Dutch and Frisian, but a North
Germanic language, such as Norwegian, Swedish and Danish:Their research and conclusions are brand new and break with those of earlier linguistic professors who believe English is rooted in “Old English,” also known as the Anglo-Saxon language believed brought to the British Isles by settlers from northwestern and central Europe. Faarlund claims Scandinavians settled in the area long before French-speaking Normans conquered the British Isles in 1066.
Faarlund and Edmonds also contend that Old English and modern English are two very different languages. “We think Old English simply died out,” Faarlund told Apollon. “Instead, the Nordic language survived, strongly influenced by Old English.” [...]
Scandinavian settlers, Faarlund notes, gained control towards the end of the 9th century of an area known as Danelagen, which forms parts of Scotland and England today. Faarlund stressed that “an extremely important geographic point in our research” is that the East Midlands in England, where he says the modern English language developed, was part of the relatively densely populated southern portion of Danelagen.
Edmonds and Faarlund also contend that sentence structure in what developed into modern English is Scandinavian, not western Germanic as previously believed. Both today’s Scandinavian languages place the object after the verb, for example, unlike German and Dutch which place the verb at the end of a sentence. Possessive forms can also be the same in both the Scandinavian languages and English, which also can end sentences with a preposition and split infinitives. While that’s sometimes frowned upon in other variations of modern English such as American English, Faarlund argues it’s not possible in German, Dutch or Old English.
An archaeologist in Belize is
suing the makers of the last Indiana Jones movie for using a crystal
skull allegedly taken from Maya ruins. But the joke may be on him. Read more
In Coffee County, almost 60 percent of the cotton production was destroyed. Farmers faced bankruptcy and the area economy was at stake. Farmers turned to peanuts and other crops to overcome the damage brought by the boll weevil.What a marvelous attitude! No wonder the town is called "Enterprise."
By 1917, Coffee County produced and harvested more peanuts than any other county in the nation. (In 1993, Coffee County ranked 4th in the state of Alabama with 128,000 acres planted in peanuts.) In gratitude for the lessons taught, residents erected the world's only monument to an agricultural pest, the boll Weevil Monument. The monument, dedicated on December 11, 1919, stands in the center of the downtown district at the intersection of Main Street and College Street. The Boll Weevil Monument is a symbol of man's willingness and ability to adjust to adversity. Citizens continue to remind visitors and newcomers to the city the lesson of the boll weevil.
The base of the monument is inscribed: "in profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity this monument was erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama."
