Monday, December 10, 2012

December 8 in history


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DEC 07      INDEX      DEC 09
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Events


395 – Later Yan is defeated by its former vassal Northern Wei at the Battle of Canhe Slope.

757 – Du Fu returns to Chang'an as a member of Emperor Xuanzong's court, after having escaped the city during the An Lushan Rebellion.

1432 – The first battle between the forces of Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis is fought near the town of Oszmiana (Ashmyany), launching the most active phase of the Lithuanian Civil War.

1596 – Luis de Carabajal the younger, one of the first Jewish authors in the Americas, died in an auto-da-fé during the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico City.

1660 – A woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.

1775:  Colonel Benedict Arnold and General Richard Montgomery led an American force in the siege of Quebec.  The Americans hoped to capture the British-occupied city and with it win support for the American cause in Canada.  My 3rd great grandfather, Gabriel-Elzear Taschereau, participated in the defense of Quebec against this attack. -- Cousin Sam.

1813 – Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major premiered with Beethoven himself conducting in Vienna at a charity concert for soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau.

1854 – In his Apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment of her own conception.

1863:  President Abraham Lincoln offered his conciliatory plan for reunification of the United States with his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.

1881:  A fire at the Ring Theater in Vienna, Austria, killed at least 620 people and injured hundreds more.

1902 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr became a Supreme Court Associate Justice.

1907 – King Gustaf V of Sweden accedes to the Swedish throne.

1912 – Leaders of the German Empire hold an Imperial War Council to discuss the possibility that war might break out.

1914 – World War I: A squadron of Britain's Royal Navy defeats an inferior squadron of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet in the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. A month after German naval forces led by Admiral Maximilian von Spee had inflicted the Royal Navy's first defeat in a century by sinking two British cruisers with all hands off the southern coast of Chile, Spee's squadron attempts to raid the Falkland Islands, located in the southern Atlantic Ocean, only to be thwarted by the British navy. Historians have referred to the Battle of the Falkland Islands as the most decisive naval battle of World War I.

1914:  “Watch Your Step,” the first musical revue to feature a score composed entirely by Irving Berlin, opens in New York.

1922 – Northern Ireland ceases to be part of the Irish Free State.

1927 – The Brookings Institution, one of the United States' oldest think tanks, is founded through the merger of three organizations that had been created by philanthropist Robert S. Brookings.

1941 – World War II: Japanese forces simultaneously invade Shanghai International Settlement, Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies. (See December 7 for the concurrent attack on Pearl Harbor in the Western Hemisphere.)


1941 – World War II: As America's Pacific fleet lay in ruins at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war on Japan in perhaps the most memorable speech of his career. The speech, in which he declares December 7 to be "a date which will live in infamy", and calls Japan's act a "deliberate deception," receives thunderous applause from Congress and, soon after, the United States officially enters the Second World War.  Montanan Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and a dedicated lifelong pacifist, casts the sole Congressional vote against the U.S. declaration of war on Japan.

1949:  As they steadily lose ground to the communist forces of Mao Zedong, Chinese Nationalist leaders depart for the island of Taiwan, where they establish their new capital.

1949 – The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is established to provide aid to Palestinian refugees who left their homes during the 1948 Palestinian exodus.

1952 – The first pregnancy for a television character occurs on I Love Lucy.

1953 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, which leads to an American program to supply equipment and information on nuclear power to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world.

1962 – Workers at four New York City newspapers (this later increases to nine) go on strike for 114 days.

1963 – Pan Am Flight 214, a Boeing 707, is struck by lightning and crashes near Elkton, Maryland, killing all 81 people on board.

1965:  In some of the heaviest raids of the war, 150 U.S. Air Force and Navy planes launched Operation Tiger Hound to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the lower portion of the Laotian panhandle, from Route 9 west of the Demilitarized Zone, south to the Cambodian border. The purpose of this operation, which lasted until 1968, was to reduce North Vietnamese infiltration down the trail into South Vietnam. After 1968, the Tiger Hound missions became part of a new operation called Commando Hunt.

1966:  The International Red Cross announces in Geneva that North Vietnam has rejected a proposal by President Johnson for a resolution of the prisoner of war situation. He had proposed a joint discussion of fair treatment and possible exchange of war captives held by both sides. The International Red Cross submitted the proposal to North Vietnamese officials in July after Johnson first broached the plan on July 20 at a news conference. No solution was reached on the issue until the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. By the terms of the accords, all U.S. prisoners were to be released by the following March.

1966 – The Greek ship SS Heraklion sinks in a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200.

1969 – An Olympic Airways Douglas DC-6 strikes a mountain outside of Keratea, Greece, killing 90—the worst crash of a DC-6.

1969:  At a news conference, President Richard Nixon said that the Vietnam War was coming to a "conclusion as a result of the plan that we have instituted." Nixon had announced at a conference in Midway in June that the United States would be following a new program he termed "Vietnamization."

1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Navy launches an attack on West Pakistan's port city of Karachi.

1972 – United Airlines Flight 553, a Boeing 737, crashes after aborting its landing attempt at Chicago Midway International Airport, killing 45. The crash is the first-ever loss of a Boeing 737.

1974 – A plebiscite results in the abolition of monarchy in Greece.

1980 – John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group that transformed popular music in the 1960s, is shot and killed by Mark David Chapman, an obsessed fan, in front of The Dakota in New York City.

1982 – In Suriname, several opponents of the military government are killed.

1987 – At a summit meeting in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first treaty between the two superpowers to reduce their massive nuclear arsenals.

1987 – Frank Vitkovic shoots and kills eight people at the Australia Post building in Melbourne, before jumping to his death.

1987 – The Alianza Lima air disaster occurs.

1987 – An Israeli army tank transporter kills four Palestinian refugees and injures seven others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the Israel–Gaza Strip border, sparking the First Intifada.

1988 – A United States Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II crashes into an apartment complex in Remscheid, Germany, killing 5 people and injuring 50 others.

1991 – The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.

1991 – The Romanian Constitution is adopted in a referendum.

1993:  The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

1998 – Eighty-one people are killed by armed groups in Algeria.

2004 – The Cusco Declaration is signed in Cusco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.

2007 – Three unidentified gunmen storm an office of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party in Balochistan. Three PPP supporters are killed.

2009 – Bombings in Baghdad, Iraq, kill 127 and injure 448.

2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the first launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

2010 – The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus at a distance of about 80,800 km.

2013 – Riots break out in Singapore after a fatal accident in Little India.



Saints' Days and Holy Days

Traditional Western

Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.      Double of the First Class.
(note: This feast is not recognized by many non-Roman Catholics)


Contemporary Western

Feast of the Immaculate Conception and its related observances
Romaric


Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran

Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Anglican Communion)
      lesser commemoration
Richard Baxter (US Episcopal Church)


Eastern Orthodox
Saints

Holy Apostles of the Seventy (1st century):
      Sosthenes, Apollos, Cephas, Tychicus, Epaphroditus,
            Caesar, and Onesiphorus.
Saint Patapius of Thebes (4th century)
Holy 362 Martyrs of Africa, martyred by the Arians (477):
      62 priests and 300 laymen martyred by the Arians  (see also December 7)
Venerable Sophronius, Bishop of Cyprus (8th century)
Venerable Aeros, Archbishop of the Church of Jerusalem

Pre-Schism Western Saints

Saint Eucharius (Valerius), first Bishop of Trier in Germany (c. 250)
Saint Eutychian, Pope of Rome, venerated as a martyr (283)
Martyr Anthusa (Anthysa) at Rome (5th century)
Saint Budoc, Bishop of Plourin Ploudalmezeau in Finistère (6th century)
Saint Romaricus, monk at Luxeuil Abbey, later founded the monastery of Habendum
      (Remiremont Abbey, Romarici Mons), and became the second abbot (653)
Saint Gunthild, a nun from Wimborne in England, went to Germany
      and became Abbess of a convent in Thuringia (748)

Post-Schism Orthodox Saints

Saint Cyril, Abbot of Chelmogorsk, Enlightener of the Chudian People (1367)

New Martyrs and Confessors

Hieromartyr Michael Kiselev, Protopresbyter, new martyr of Perm (1918)
Hieromartyr Alexander Fedoseyev, Priest, new martyr of Perm (1918)

Hieromartyr Sergius Orlov (1937)

Other commemorations

Hieromartyr John Kochurov, Priest (1918)


Coptic Orthodox









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