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, the 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 Kwanzaa, 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 its “Man of the Year”, the first non-human ever to receive the honor.
1991		The Supreme Soviet 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 would make 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.