On December 12th...

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1408 The Order of the Dragon was created by Emperor Sigismund of Hungary and his wife Queen Barbara of Celje.

1724 British Admiral Samuel Hood was born.

1731 Naturalist Erasmus Darwin was born.

1745 John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was born.

1787 Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1791 The Bank of the United States opened.
1791 Empress Marie Louise of France was born.

1800 Washington, D.C. was established as the capital of the United States.

1821 Novelist Gustave Glaubert was born.

1822 The United States recognized the independence of Mexico.

1863 Painter Edvard Munch was born.

1870 Joseph Rainey (of South Carolina) became the first black to be sworn into the United States House of Representatives.

1878 Joseph Pulitzer began publishing the St. Louis Dispatch.

1889 Poet Robert Browning died.

1893 Actor Edward G. Robinson was born.

1895 The Vitascope was demonstrated publicly for the first time.

1899 George F. Bryant patented the wooden golf tee.

1901 Guglielmo Marconi received the first radio signal sent across the Atlantic Ocean.

1911 Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of India.

1915 The first all-metal aircraft (a Junkers J-1) was test flown at Dessau, Germany.
1915 Singer Frank Sinatra was born.

1917 Reverend Edward Flanagan established Boys Town.

1923 Game show host Bob Barker was born.

1924 Ed Koch, Mayor of New York City, was born.

1925 Arthur Heinman opened the world's first "motel", the Motel Inn, in San Luis Obispo, California.

1934 Hilla Limann, President of Ghana, was born.
1934 Miguel de la Madrid, President of Mexico, was born.

1938 Singer Connie Francis was born.

1939 Actor Douglas Fairbanks died.

1940 Singer Dionne Warwick was born.

1942 A fire in a hostel in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, killed 100 people.

1943 Guitarist Dickey Betts was born.

1946 "Tide" laundry detergent was introduced.
1946 Auto racer Emerson Fittipaldi was born.

1952 Actress Sarah Douglas was born.
1952 Gymnast Cathy Rigby was born.

1955 Christopher Cockerell patented a prototype hovercraft.

1959 The UN Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space was established.

1961 Martin Luther King, Jr., and 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Georgia.

1962 Tennis player Tracy Austin was born.

1963 Kenya gained full independence from the United Kingdom.
1963 Theodor Heuss, the first President of West Germany, died.

1968 Arthur Ashe became the first black to be ranked #1 in tennis.
1968 Actress Tallulah Bankhead died.

1973 San Diego filed an anti-trust suit against the National League in order to stop the Padres move to Washington, DC.

1975 A gas stove explosion started a fire that ultimately killed 138 persons in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
1975 Actress Mayim Bialik was born.

1976 Actor Jack Cassiday died.

1985 A DC-8 crashed near Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, killing 258 persons.
1985 Actress Anne Baxter died.

1986 A Russian Tupolev-134 crashed in East Berlin, Germany, killing 70 persons.

1988 The movie Rainman premiered in New York City, New York.

1998 American politician Lawton Chiles died.
1998 American politician Mo Udall died.

1999 Author Joseph Heller died.

2007 Musician Ike Turner died.

2008 Tassos Papadopoulos, President of Cyprus, died.

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This page was last updated on December 12, 2017.