| 1135 | Stephen of Blois is crowned the king of England. | |
| 1775 | Esek Hopkins takes command of the Continental Navy — a total of seven ships. | |
| 1807 | Congress passes the Embargo Act, which halts all trading completely. It is hoped that the act will keep the United States out of the European Wars. | |
| 1829 | The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opens the first passenger railway line. | |
| 1918 | The last of the food restrictions, enforced because of the shortages during World War I, are lifted. | |
| 1929 | Soviet troops leave Manchuria after a truce is reached with the Chinese over the Eastern Railway dispute. | |
| 1941 | Japanese troops make an amphibious landing on the coast of Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, the Philippines. | |
| 1942 | The Soviets drive German troops back 15 miles at the Don River. | |
| 1944 | During the Battle of the Bulge, General Anthony McAuliffe responds to a German surrender request with a one word answer: “Nuts!” | |
| 1945 | The United States recognizes Tito’s government in Yugoslavia. | |
| 1965 | The EF-105F Wild Weasel makes its first kill over Vietnam. | |
| 1966 | The United States announces the allocation of 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine in India. | |
| 1989 | The Romanian government of Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown, ending 42 years of communist rule. | |
| 1989 | The division of East and West Germany effectively ends when the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin reopens for the first time in nearly 30 years. | |
| 1992 | What became known as the Archives of Terror are discovered in a police station near the capital of Paraguay. The records detail tens of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly imprisoned, tortured and / or killed by the security services of several South American governments. | |
| 1997 | Hussein Farrah Aidid relinquishes his disputed title of President of Somalia, an important step toward reconciliation in the country. | |
| 2001 | President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, takes over an interim government. | |
| 2001 | A passenger on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris, Richard Reid, unsuccessfully attempts to destroy the plane in flight by igniting explosives he’d hidden in his shoes. | |
| 2008 | Some 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry flood part of Tennessee after an ash dike breaks at a solid waste containment area in Roane County, in the eastern part of the state. | |
| 2010 | US President Barack Obama signs a law officially repealing the 17-year-old policy known as “Don’t ask, don’t tell”; the new law permits homosexuals to serve openly in the US military. |
The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur has been found entombed in amber, an unprecedented discovery that has blown away scientists.
Xing Lida, a Chinese paleontologist found the specimen, the size of a dried apricot, at an amber market in northern Myanmar near the Chinese border...The tail section belongs to a young coelurosaurian -- from the same group of dinosaurs as the predatory velociraptors and the tyrannosaurus.The sparrow-sized creature could have danced in the palm of your hand.
He carefully approached the koala and let it sniff at the hair brush before attempting to brush the prickles out.It just goes to show that animals communicate well if you pay attention and give them a chance. Atkinson posted a video of the de-burring operation at the Otway Community Facebook group
"I just gently poked the brush at some of the burrs," he said.
"Within seconds it decided, 'this is alright, I'll have more of this'."
Mr Atkinson said he was amazed at how benign the previously aggressive koala became once it was having its fur brushed.
He said he was able to remove most of the burrs and then collected some gum leaves for the koala, which hung around his house for the rest of the day.
| 68 | Vespian, a gruff-spoken general of humble origins, enters Rome and is named emperor by the Senate. | |
| 1620 | The Pilgrims land at or near Plymouth Rock. | |
| 1708 | French forces seize control of the eastern shore of Newfoundland after winning a victory at St. John’s. | |
| 1790 | Samuel Slater opens the first cotton mill in the United States (in Rhode Island). | |
| 1862 | The U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor to be awarded to Navy personnel who have distinguished themselves by their gallantry in action. | |
| 1866 | Indians, led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, kill Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 other men who had ventured out from Fort Phil Kearny to cut wood. | |
| 1910 | Over 2.5 million plague victims are reported in the An-Hul province of China. | |
| 1928 | Coolidge signs the Boulder Dam bill. | |
| 1944 | German troops surround the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne in Belgium. | |
| 1945 | General George S. Patton dies at the age of 60 after being injured in a car accident. | |
| 1946 | An earthquake and tidal wave kill hundreds in Japan. | |
| 1963 | The Turk minority riots in Cyprus to protest anti-Turkish revisions in the constitution. | |
| 1964 | Great Britain’s House of Commons votes to ban the death penalty. | |
| 1965 | Four pacifists are indicted in New York for burning draft cards — Thomas C. Cornell, 31, co-secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship; Roy Lisker, 27, a volunteer of the Catholic Worker Movement; James E. Wilson, 21, a volunteer at the Catholic Worker Movement and a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation; and M P, Edelman, a full-time worker for the War Resisters League. | |
| 1969 | American draft evaders gather for a holiday dinner in Montreal, Canada. | |
| 1986 | 500,000 Chinese students gather in Shanghai’s People’s Square calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of the press. | |
| 1988 | Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, an hour after departure. All 259 passengers were killed in the explosion caused by a bomb– hidden inside an audio cassette player — that detonated inside the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. A shower of airplane parts falling from the sky also killed 11 Lockerbie residents. | |
| 1994 | Popocatepetl, a volcano in Mexico spews forth gases and ash after nearly a half-century of dormancy. | |
| 1995 | The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control. | |
| 2004 | A suicide bomber attacks the forward operating base next to the US military airfield at Mosul, Iraq, killing 22 people; it is the deadliest suicide attack on US soldiers during the Iraq War. |
On a dusty shelf, he found what he was looking for—a collection of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore for her portrayal of Dorothy Gale for the filming of the 1939 Wizard of Oz. These were the famous shoes that only needed to be tapped three times and that touched so many hearts with their magical theme—“There’s no place like home.”So what happened to the other slippers? Find out in an article at Smithsonian.
There were several sets of ruby slippers on the shelf, plus a curly-toed test pair. Warner had been told to destroy all but one. The single remaining pair were to be offered for sale at the seminal multi-day MGM Studios auction, where 350,000 costumes were to be sold, including the loin cloth worn by Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan and Gene Kelly’s sailor hat from the 1949 film On the Town.
Warner picked out a pair of ruby slippers for the sale. But on the sly, he stuffed the others in a bag and walked them off the lot.
People buying computers in South Carolina would be limited in their access to porn online under newly proposed legislation.
A bill pre-filed this month by Chumley would require sellers to install digital blocking capabilities on computers and other devices that access the internet to prevent the viewing of obscene content...
Both sellers and buyers could get around the limitation, for a fee. The bill would fine manufacturers that sell a device without the blocking system, but they could opt out by paying $20 per device sold. Buyers could also verify their age and pay $20 to remove the filter...
| 69 | Vespians’s supporters enter Rome and discover Vitellius in hiding. He is dragged through the streets before being brutally murdered. | |
| 1355 | Stephen Urosh IV of Serbia dies while marching to attack Constantinople. | |
| 1802 | The United States buys the Louisiana territory from France. | |
| 1860 | South Carolina secedes from the Union. | |
| 1861 | English transports loaded with 8,000 troops set sail for Canada so that troops are available if the “Trent Affair” is not settled without war. | |
| 1924 | Adolf Hitler is released from prison after serving less than one year of a five year sentence for treason. | |
| 1930 | Thousands of Spaniards sign a revolutionary manifesto. | |
| 1933 | The German government announces 400,000 citizens are to be sterilized because of hereditary defects. | |
| 1938 | First electronic television system is patented. | |
| 1941 | The Flying Tigers, American pilots in China, enter combat against the Japanese over Kunming. | |
| 1943 | Soviet forces halt a German army trying to relieve the besieged city of Stalingrad. | |
| 1946 | Viet Minh and French forces fight fiercely in Annamite section of Hanoi. | |
| 1948 | U.S. Supreme Court announces that it has no jurisdiction to hear the appeals of Japanese war criminals sentenced by the International Military Tribunal. | |
| 1960 | National Liberation Front is formed by guerrillas fighting the Diem regime in South Vietnam. | |
| 1962 | In its first free election in 38 years, the Dominican Republic chooses leftist Juan Bosch Gavino as president. | |
| 1963 | Four thousand cross the Berlin Wall to visit relatives under a 17-day Christmas accord. | |
| 1989 | U.S. troops invade Panama to oust General Manuel Noriega and replace him with Guillermo Endara. | |
| 1995 | NATO begins peacekeeping operation in Bosnia. | |
| 1996 | NeXT merges with Apple Computer, leading to the development of groundbreaking Mac OS X. | |
| 2007 | Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch in the history of the UK; previously, that honor belonged to Queen Victoria. |
A
centuries-old herbal medicine, discovered by Chinese scientists and
used to effectively treat malaria, has been found to potentially aid in
the treatment of tuberculosis and may slow the evolution of drug
resistance. In a … Read more
