Thursday, December 13, 2012

December 15 in history


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DEC 14      INDEX      DEC 16
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Events


533 – Vandalic War: Byzantine general Belisarius defeats the Vandals, commanded by King Gelimer, at the Battle of Tricamarum.

687 – Pope Sergius I is elected.

1161 – Jin–Song wars: Military officers conspire against Emperor Hailing of the Jin dynasty after a military defeat at the Battle of Caishi, and assassinate the emperor at his camp.

1167 – Sicilian Chancellor Stephen du Perche moves the royal court to Messina to prevent a rebellion.

1256 – Hulagu Khan captures and destroys the Hashshashin stronghold at Alamut Castle (in present-day Iran) as part of the Mongol offensive on Islamic southwest Asia.

1467 – Stephen III of Moldavia defeats Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, with the latter being injured thrice, at the Battle of Baia.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: British and French fleets clash in the Battle of St. Lucia.

1791 – The United States Bill of Rights is ratified by the Virginia General Assembly, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Nashville: The once powerful Confederate Army of Tennessee under John Hood is almost completely destroyed when Union forces commanded by General George Thomas swarm over the Rebel trenches around Nashville.

1890 – After many years of successfully resisting white efforts to destroy him and the Sioux people, the great Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man Sitting Bull is killed by Indian police at the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

1905 – The Pushkin House is established in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin.

1906 – The London Underground's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opens.

1913 – Nicaragua becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires Convention.

1914 – World War I: The Serbian Army recaptures Belgrade from the invading Austro-Hungarian Army.

1914 – A gas explosion at Mitsubishi Hōjō coal mine, in Kyushu, Japan, kills 687.

1915:  Allied forces began a full retreat from the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, ending a disastrous invasion of the Ottoman Empire.  The Gallipoli campaign resulted in 250,000 Allied casualties and a greatly discredited Allied military command.  Roughly an equal number of Turks were killed or wounded.

1917 – World War I: An armistice between Russia and the Central Powers is signed.

1933:  The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.
Loewes Grand Theater ca. 1920
see also a then and now fade at

1939:  Gone with the Wind premiered at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. The theater was given a new facade for the occasion: a wooden overlay of the pillars of Tara, the plantation of the movie. A day before, 150,000 people lined the sidewalks for the arrival of the stars, including Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. Hattie McDaniel, who starred as the servant Mammy and who became the first black performer to win an Academy Award, was not present for the permier, however. Georgia laws meant the black actors would have had to sit separately from their white counterparts.

1941 – The Holocaust: German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Soviet Union.

1942 – World War II: The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign.

1943 – World War II: The Battle of Arawe begins during the New Britain Campaign.

1944 – A single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappears over the English Channel while en route to Paris.

1944 – General Eisenhower is presented his 5th star from Congress.

1945:  General Douglas MacArthur, in his capacity as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in the Pacific, orders that Shinto be abolished as Japan's established religion. The Shinto system included the belief that the emperor, in this case Hirohito, was divine.

1946 – U.S.-backed Iranian troops evict the leadership of the breakaway Republic of Mahabad, putting an end to the Iran crisis of 1946.

1946 – The first election to the Representative Assembly of French India was held.

1954 – The Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands is signed.

1960 – Richard Pavlick is arrested for plotting to assassinate U.S. President-Elect John F. Kennedy.

1960 – King Mahendra of Nepal suspends the country's constitution, dissolves parliament, dismisses the cabinet, and imposes direct rule.

1961 – In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish question," is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli war crimes tribunal of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.

1965 – Project Gemini: Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7.

1965:  In the first raid on a major North Vietnamese industrial target, U.S. Air Force planes destroy a thermal power plant at Uong Bi, l4 miles north of Haiphong. The plant reportedly supplied about 15 percent of North Vietnam's total electric power production.

1967 – The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapses, killing 46 people.

1969:  President Richard Nixon announced that 50,000 additional U.S. troops would be pulled out of South Vietnam by April 15, 1970. This was the third reduction since the June Midway conference, when Nixon announced his Vietnamization program.

1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully land on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet

1970 – The South Korean ferry Namyong Ho capsizes in the Korea Strait, killing over 300 people.
Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10.

1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-II.

1976 – Western Samoa becomes a member of the United Nations.

1976 – The oil tanker MV Argo Merchant runs aground near Nantucket, Massachusetts, causing one of the worst marine oil spills in history.

1978 – In one of the most dramatic announcements of the Cold War, U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that as of January 1, 1979, the United States will formally recognize the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) and sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

1981 – A suicide car bombing targeting the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, levels the embassy and kills 61 people, including Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon. The attack is considered the first modern suicide bombing.

1993 – The Troubles: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

1993:  Schindler’s List, starring Liam Neeson in the true story of a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust, opened in theaters. The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and took home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

1994 – Palau becomes a member of the United Nations.

1997 – Tajikistan Airlines Flight 3183 crashes in the desert near Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, killing 85.

1998:  The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary released a 265-page report recommending the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors.

1999:  Flooding and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rains killed thousands in Venezuela. Another 350,000 people, mostly the very poor, were left homeless from the terrible storm.

2000 – The third reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down.

2001 – Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to fortify it without eliminating its famous lean.

2005 – Introduction of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor into USAF active service.

2006 – First flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.

2009 – Boeing's 787 Dreamliner makes its maiden flight from Seattle, Washington.

2010 – A boat carrying 90 asylum seekers crashes into rocks off the coast of Christmas Island, Australia, killing 48 people.

2014 – Man Haron Monis takes 18 hostages in a siege at the Lindt Chocolate Café at Martin Place, Sydney, lasting for 17 hours. He dies, along with two hostages, when police raid the café the following morning.



Saints' Days and Holy Days

Traditional Western

Octave of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin.      Double.


Contemporary Western

Drina Martyrs
Drostan (Aberdeen Breviary)
Maria Crocifissa di Rosa
Mesmin
Valerian of Abbenza
Virginia Centurione Bracelli


Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran

John Horden and Robert McDonald (Episcopal Church (USA))


Eastern Orthodox
Saints

Hieromartyr Eleutherius, Bishop of Illyria,[1] and Martyrs Anthia
      (his mother), Coremonus the Eparch (Corybus),
      and two executioners who suffered with them
Martyr Eleutherius of Byzantium (beginning of the 4th century)
Martyr Susanna the Deaconess, of Palestine (4th century)
Venerable Pardus the Hermit, of Palestine (6th century)
Saint Stephen the Confessor, Archbishop of Surozh in the Crimea (c. 790)
Monk-martyr Bacchus of St. Sabbas Monastery (Bacchus the New),
      by beheading (late 8th century)

Venerable Paul of Mt. Latros (Paul the New Ascetic) (896 or 956)

Pre-Schism Western Saints

Saint Valerian of Abbenza, Bishop of Abbenza in North Africa (457)
Martyrs Faustinus, Lucius, Candidus, Caelian, Mark, Januarius,
      and Fortunatus, in North Africa
Saint Mesmin (Maximin, Maximinus), first Abbot of Micy
      (Saint-Mesmin de Micy Abbey) near Orleans in France (520)
Saint Aubertus, Bishop of Cambrai-Arras (Netherlands) (668)
Saint Florentius (Flann), Abbot of Bangor Abbey in Ireland (7th century)
Saint Offa of Essex, King of Essex in England, he went to Rome
      and took up the monastic life (c. 709)
Saint Urbicius (Urbitius, Úrbez) (c. 805)
Saint Adalbero (Adalbero II of Upper Lorraine), a monk at the
      monastery of Gorze in France, became Bishop of Verdun,
      but was transferred to Metz (1005)

Post-Schism Orthodox Saints

Saint Nectarius of Bitel (Nektarios of Bitola, Nektarij Bitolski) (1500)
Saint Tryphon of Pechenga or Kola, "Enlightener of the Lapps" (1583),
      and his martyred disciple Jonah (1590)

New Martyrs and Confessors

New Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Verey (1929)
New Hieromartyrs Alexander Rozhdestvensky and Basil Vinogradov, Priests of Tver (1937)
New Hieromartyr Victorinus Dobronravov, Priest (1937)
New Hieromartyr Joseph, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg (1938)
Virgin-martyr Victorina (Diobronravova)

Other commemorations

Commemoration of the ordination of St. John Chrysostom
      as Patriarch of Constantinople (15 December 397)
Synaxis of the Saints of the Crimea
Synaxis of the Saints of Kola (Kolsk)


Coptic Orthodox








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