This Week in History: Dec. 4th-10th

Dec 4- 1783: General George Washington bids farewell to his Continental Army officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York City. 1791: Great Britain’s The Observer, the world’s first Sunday newspaper, is published in London. 1943: Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis announces that clubs are able to sign “Negro” players. 1961: After 47 days on display and over 100,000 visitors, officials at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City are alerted by museum patron Genevieve Habert that Henri Matisse’s “Le Bateau” was hung on the wall upside down. (They quietly corrected the error). 1978: Dianne Feinstein becomes the first female mayor of San Francisco, chosen by her fellow members of the Board of Supervisors to succeed the assassinated George Moscone.

Dec 5- 1848: President James K. Polk confirms that gold had been discovered in California in a speech to Congress, triggering the 1849 Gold Rush. 1872: The merchant ship “Mary Celeste” is found adrift and abandoned off the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. The seaworthy vessel was found fully provisioned with the crew’s personal belongings intact. No one who had been on board the ship was ever seen or heard from again. 1932: The 21st Amendment to the Constitution is ratified when approved by the Utah Legislature at 5:32 pm EST, overturning the 18th Amendment and ending Prohibition in the United States. (Just in time for “Happy Hour!”). 1945: A Squadron of Navy Avenger planes disappears after reporting compass and instrument failures on a routine training mission. Several land-based radar stations indicated the planes were located north of the Bahamas off Florida’s east coast and a search-and-rescue Mariner aircraft took off. At 7:27pm, the Mariner reported it was nearing the squadron’s last known location and was never heard from again. Despite one of the largest air-and-sea searches in history, no trace of the bodies or aircraft were ever found, creating the still-unsolved “Bermuda Triangle” mystery. 2017: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announces that Russian teams have been banned from the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in South Korea because of state-sponsored violations of anti-doping rules.

Dec 6- 1865: The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, abolishing slavery, is ratified when approved by the Georgia Legislature. 1907: The worst mining disaster in US history occurs in Monongah, WV, when a coal mine explosion kills 362 men and boys. 1923: President Calvin Coolidge’s speech to a joint session of Congress is broadcast on radio, the first presidential address to be heard nationwide. 1947: President Harry S. Truman officiates the dedication of Everglades National Park in Florida. 1964: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” premieres on NBC television. The beloved animated story, inspired by songwriter Johnny Marks and singer Gene Autry, is the longest-running holiday TV special in history. (and some of us will be watching it for the 60th time when it airs this year!)

Dec 7- 1787: The state of Delaware earns its “First State” nickname by being the first to ratify the US Constitution. 1907: Chemist Leo Baekeland receives a patent for Bakelite, the first thermo-setting plastic that would be the springboard for launching the plastics industry. 1941: The Empire of Japan launches a surprise attack on the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,400 and destroying much of the Nation’s Pacific Fleet of ships and planes. 1968: Richard Todd returns a book borrowed by his great-grandfather from the University of Cincinnati Library in 1823. (No word on the fine he paid for the 145-years-overdue book!) 1982: Convicted murderer Charlie Brooks Jr. becomes the first US prisoner to be executed by lethal injection at a prison in Huntsville, TX.

Dec 8- 1886: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded in Columbus, OH. 1941: President Franklin Roosevelt addresses a joint session of Congress, famously describing the previous day’s Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as the reason the date would “live in infamy.” The Senate would vote 82-0 for a declaration of war against Japan, while the vote in the House of Representatives was 388-1, with noted pacifist (and the first woman ever elected to Congress) Jeanette Rankin (R-MT) casting the lone dissenting vote. 1980: Former Beatle John Lennon is shot and killed outside his New York City apartment building by Mark David Chapman. 1993: President Bill Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), creating the world’s largest free trade zone from Canada to Mexico.

Dec 9- 1854: Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” is first published in The Examiner. 1868: The first traffic lights are installed outside Westminster Palace in London. 1965: Baseball executive Branch Rickey, best known as the man who signed Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers and brought him up to the major leagues in 1947, dies of congestive heart failure at the Boone Hospital Center Emergency Room in Columbia, MO at 83-years-old. 1990: Lech Walęsa, the leader of the Solidarity labor movement that began in the shipyards of Gdansk, is elected president of Poland in the country’s first-ever direct election. 1992: Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana announce their separation.

Dec 10- 1901: Exactly five years after the founder’s death, the first Nobel Peace Prize is shared by Frédéric Passy, considered the dean of the international peace movement, and Henri Dunant, co-founder of the Red Cross. 1915: Ford Motor Company produces its one millionth automobile at the River Rouge plant in Detroit, MI without fanfare marking the occasion. (Sounds like somebody was asleep on the job…) 1936: King Edward VIII abdicates the British throne in order to marry American socialite and divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. 1953: The first issue of Playboy magazine hits newsstands, featuring Marilyn Monroe on the cover and selling for 50¢. 1964: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.