Today in History

1776   After crossing the Delaware River into New Jersey, George Washington leads an attack on Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, and takes 900 men prisoner.  
1786   Daniel Shay leads a rebellion in Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt.  
1806   Napoleon's army is checked by the Russians at the Battle of Pultusk.  
1862   38 Santee Sioux are hanged in Mankato, Minnesota for their part in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. Little Crow has fled the state.  
1866   Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke, head of the Department of the Platte, receives word of the Fetterman Fight in Powder River County in the Dakota territory.  
1917   As a wartime measure, President Woodrow Wilson places railroads under government control, with Secretary of War William McAdoo as director general.  
1925   Six U.S. destroyers are ordered from Manila to China to protect interests in the civil war that is being waged there.  
1932   Over 70,000 people are killed in a massive earthquake in China.  
1941   General Douglas MacArthur declares Manila an open city in the face of the onrushing Japanese Army.  
1943   The German battleship Scharnhorst is sunk by British ships in an Arctic fight.  
1944   Advancing Soviet troops complete their encirclement of Budapest in Hungary.  
1945   The United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain, end a 10-day meeting, seeking an atomic rule by the UN Council.  
1953   The United States announces the withdrawal of two divisions from Korea.  
1962   Eight East Berliners escape to West Berlin, crashing through gates in an armor-plated bus.
1966   Dr. Maulana Karenga celebrates the first Kwanza, a seven-day African-American celebration of family and heritage.  
1979   The Soviet Union flies 5,000 troops to intervene in the Afghanistan conflict.  
1982   Time magazine chooses a personal computer as it "Man of the Year," the first non-human ever to receive th honor.  
1991   The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union formally dissolves the Soviet Union.
1996   JonBenet Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty queen, is found beaten and strangled to death in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado, one of the most high-profile crimes of the late 20th century in the US.  
1996   Workers in South Korea's automotive and shipbuilding industries begin the largest labor strike in that country's history, protesting a new law that made firing employees easier and would curtail the rights of labor groups to organize.  
1999   Lothar, a violent, 36-hour windstorm begins; it kills 137 and causes $1.3 billion (US dollars) damage in Central Europe.  
2004   A tsunami caused by a 9.3-magnitude earthquake kills more than 230,000 along the rim of the Indian Ocean.  
2006   Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford dies at age 93. Ford was the only unelected president in America's history.