EVENTS
- 1932 – The 1st NFL Pro football playoff game takes place.
- 1865 – Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution adopted. The first of the 3 Reconstruction Amendments, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. The other two Reconstruction Amendments – the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendments – extended citizenship rights, equal protection of the law, and the right to vote to all Americans irrespective of their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
- 1892 – The first performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ is held
- 1912 – Piltdown Man Hoax. The announcement by British archeologist Charles Dawson at a conference of the Geological Society of London was received with very little skepticism in the field of paleoanthropology. The discovery of fossilized remains of an unidentified human ancestor in Piltdown, East Sussex, England, was thought to have provided valuable clues about human evolution. It wasn’t until 1953 that the Piltdown Man was discovered to be a hoax – with the skull consisting of the jawbones of an orangutan and the cranium of an adult human being.
- 1916 – During World War I, the Battle of Verdun concluded after ten months of fighting in which 543,000 French and 434,000 German soldiers were killed.
- 1940 – Adolf Hitler ordered the German General Staff to begin planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Russia.
- 1956 – Japan was admitted to the United Nations.
- 1958 – World’s first communication satellite launched. A product of a highly secretive project, SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was launched aboard the Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Once in orbit, it relayed the first message sent to Earth from space – a short statement by American President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- 1961 – Wilt Chamberlain scores 78 points in an NBA game (the second highest points total ever).
- 1964 – ‘The Pink Panther’ cartoon series premieres on television.
- 1965 – Kenneth LeBel jumps a record 17 barrels on ice skates
- 1966 – Saturn’s Moon, Epimetheus, discovered. One of Saturn’s 150 natural satellites or moons, Epimetheus shares its orbit with another moon, Janus. Saturn’s largest moon is Titan, which is the only natural satellite in the Solar System with an atmosphere.
- 1976 – ‘Wonder Woman’ debuts on ABC
BIRTHDAYS
- 1878 – Joseph Stalin (Soviet marshal, politician, 4th Premier of the Soviet Union)
- 1886 – Ty Cobb (Baseball Player)
- 1913 – West German Chancellor Willy Brandt (1913-1992) was born in Lubeck, Germany (as Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm). During Hitler’s regime, he was an anti-Nazi exile. He returned to Germany after World War II, entered politics and was elected chancellor in 1969. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to improve East-West relations during the Cold War.
- 1943 – Keith Richards (Guitarist for the Rolling Stones)
- 1946 – Steven Spielberg (Movie Director)
- 1963 – Brad Pitt (Actor)
- 1964 – Stone Cold Steve Austin (Pro Wrestler)
- 1978 – Katie Holmes (Actress)
- 1980 – Christina Aguilera (Singer)
- 1989 – Ashley Benson (Actress)
- 1992 – Bridjit Mendler (Actress)
DEATHS
- 1892 – Richard Owen (English biologist)
- 1980 – Alexei Kosygin (Soviet politician)
- 2006 – Joseph Barbera (American animator, director, producer, co-founded Hanna-Barbera)
- 2008 – Mark Felt (American agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2011 – Václav Havel (Czech politician, 1st President of the Czech Republic)