1776 – “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine was published.

1840 – The penny post, whereby mail was delivered at a standard charge rather than paid for by the recipient, began in Britain.

1861 – Florida seceded from the United States.

1863 – Prime Minister Gladstone opened the first section of the London Underground Railway system, from Paddington to Farringdon Street.

1870 – John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil.

1901 – Oil was discovered at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont, TX.

1911 – Major Jimmie Erickson took the first photograph from an airplane while flying over San Diego, CA.

1920 – The League of Nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I with Germany.

1927 – Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” was first shown, in Berlin.

1928 – The Soviet Union ordered the exile of Leon Trotsky.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Miami, FL, to Trinidad thus becoming the first American President to visit a foreign country during wartime.

1943 – The quiz show, “The Better Half,” was heard for the first time on Mutual Radio.

1946 – The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place with 51 nations represented.

1950 – Ben Hogan appeared for the first time in a golf tournament since an auto accident a year earlier. He tied ‘Slammin’ Sammy Snead in the Los Angeles Open, however, Hogan lost in a playoff.

1951 – Donald Howard Rogers piloted the first passenger jet on a trip from Chicago to New York City.

1957 – Harold Macmillan became prime minister of Britain, following the resignation of Anthony Eden.

1963 – The Chicago Cubs became the first baseball club to hire an athletic director. He was Robert Whitlow. (MLB)

1971 – “Masterpiece Theatre” premiered on PBS with host Alistair Cooke. The introduction drama series was “The First Churchills.”

1978 – The Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a redezvous with the Salyut VI space laboratory.

1981 – In El Salvador, Marxist insurgents launched a “final offensive”.

1984 – The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.

1986 – The uncut version of Jerome Kern’s musical, “Showboat”, opened at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

1990 – Chinese Premier Li Peng ended martial law in Beijing after seven months. He said that crushing pro-democracy protests had saved China from “the abyss of misery.”

1990 – Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. completed a $14 billion merger. The new company, Time Warner, was the world’s largest entertainment company.

1994 – In Manassas, VA, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial. She had been charged with maliciously wounding her husband John. She was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.

1997 – Shelby Lynne Barrackman was strangled to death by her grand-father when she licked the icing off of cupcakes. He was convicted of the crime on September 15, 1998.

2000 – It was announced that Time-Warner had agreed to buy America On-line (AOL). It was the largest-ever corporate merger priced at $162 billion. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the deal on December 14, 2000.

2001 – American Airlines agreed to acquire most of Trans World Airlines (TWA) assets for about $500 million. The deal brought an end to the financially troubled TWA.

2002 – In France, the “Official Journal” reported that all women could get the morning-after contraception pill for free in pharmacies.

2003 – North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.

2007 – The iTunes Music Store reached 1.3 million feature length films sold and 50 million television episodes sold.

2019 – In Venezuela, Juan Guaidó and the National Assembly declared incumbent President Nicolás Maduro “illegitimate” and started the process of attempting to remove him from office.

2020 – The green Ford Mustang from the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller “Bullitt” was sold for $3.4 million at the Mecum Auctions event in Kissimmee, FL.

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The first General Assembly of the United Nations, comprising 51 nations, convenes at Westminster Central Hall in London, England. One week later, the U.N. Security Council met for the first time and established its rules of procedure. Then, on January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction

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1793 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard made the first successful balloon flight in the U.S.

1788 – Connecticut became the 5th state to join the United States.

1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduced income tax, at two shillings (10p) in the pound, to raise funds for the Napoleonic Wars.

1848 – The first commercial bank was established in San Francisco, CA.

1861 – The state of Mississippi seceded from the United States.

1894 – The New England Telephone and Telegraph Company put the first battery-operated switchboard into operation in Lexington, MA.

1902 – New York State introduced a bill to outlaw flirting in public.

1905 – In Russia, the civil disturbances known as the Revolution of 1905 forced Czar Nicholas II to grant some civil rights.

1929 – The Seeing Eye was incorporated in Nashville, TN. The company’s purpose was to train dogs to guide the blind.

1936 – The United States Army adopted the semi-automatic rifle.

1937 – The first issue of “Look” went on sale. Within a month, “Look” became a biweekly magazine.

1940 – Television was used for the first time to present a sales meeting to convention delegates in New York City.

1951 – The United Nations headquarters officially opened in New York City.

1961 – The play, “Rhinoceros,” opened on Broadway.

1969 – The supersonic aeroplane Concorde made its first trial flight, at Bristol.

1972 – The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth was destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor.

1972 – British miners went on strike for the first time since 1926.

1981 – Hockey Hall of Famer, Phil Esposito, announced that he would retire as a hockey player after the New York Rangers-Buffalo Sabres hockey game. The game ended in a tie. (NHL)

1984 – Clara Peller was first seen by TV viewers in the “Where’s the Beef?” commercial campaign for Wendy’s.

1986 – Kodak got out of the instant camera business after 10 years due to a loss in a court battle that claimed that Kodak copied Polaroid patents.

1991 – U.S. secretary of state Baker and Iraqi foreign minister Aziz met for 61/2 hours in Geneva, but failed to reach any agreement that would forestall war in the Persian Gulf.

1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Poliakov, 51, completed his 366th day in outer space aboard the Mir space station, breaking the record for the longest continuous time spent in outer space.

1997 – Tamil rebels attacked a military base in Sri Lanka. 200 soldiers and 140 rebels were killed.

2000 – ABC-TV began airing “The Mole.”

2002 – The U.S. Justice Department announced that it was pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron Corp. The company had filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001.

2003 – Archaeologists announced that they had found five more chambers in the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor. The rooms were believed to cover about 750,000 square feet.

2006 – Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane received stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a dual ceremony.

2007 – Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.’s CEO, announced the first generation iPhone.

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1642 – Astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy.

1675 – The first corporation was chartered in the United States. The company was the New York Fishing Company.

1790 – In the United States, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.

1815 – The Battle of New Orleans began. The War of 1812 had officially ended on December 24, 1814, with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The news of the signing had not reached British troops in time to prevent their attack on New Orleans.

1838 – Alfred Vail demonstrated a telegraph code he had devised using dots and dashes as letters. The code was the predecessor to Samuel Morse’s code.

1853 – A bronze statue of Andrew Jackson on a horse was unveiled in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. The statue was the work of Clark Mills.

1856 – Borax (hydrated sodium borate) was discovered by Dr. John Veatch.

1877 – Crazy Horse (Tashunca-uitco) and his warriors fought their final battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana.

1886 – The Severn Railway Tunnel, Britain’s longest, was opened.

1889 – The tabulating machine was patented by Dr. Herman Hollerith. His firm, Tabulating Machine Company, later became International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

1894 – Fire caused serious damage at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL.

1900 – U.S. President McKinley placed Alaska under military rule.

1900 – In South Africa, General White turned back the Boers attack of Ladysmith.

1901 – The first tournament sanctioned by the American Bowling Congress was held in Chicago, IL.

1908 – A catastrophic train collision occurred in the smoke-filled Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City. Seventeen were killed and thirty-eight were injured. The accident caused a public outcry and increased demand for electric trains.

1916 – During World War I, the final withdrawal of Allied troops from Gallipoli took place.

1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points as the basis for peace upon the end of World War I.

1921 – David Lloyd George became the first prime minister tenant at Chequers Court, Buckinghamshire.

1929 – William S. Paley appeared on CBS Radio for the first time to announce that CBS had become the largest regular chain of broadcasting chains in radio history.

1935 – The spectrophotometer was patented by A.C. Hardy.

1952 – Marie Wilson came to TV as “My Friend Irma”.

1955 – After 130 home basketball wins, Georgia Tech defeated Kentucky 59-58. It was the first Kentucky loss at home since January 2, 1943.

1957 – Jackie Robinson announced his retirement from major league baseball in an article that appeared in “LOOK” magazine.

1958 – Bobby Fisher, at the age of 14, won the United States Chess Championship for the first time.

1959 – Charles De Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France’s Fifth Republic.

1960 – The NCAA met in New York and voted against reviving the unlimited substitution rule for college football.

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.”

1961 – Robert Goulet made his national TV debut this night on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on CBS.

1962 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was exhibited in America for the first time at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The next day the exhibit opened to the public.

1973 – Secret peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resumed near Paris, France.

1973 – The trial opened in Washington, of seven men accused of bugging Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC.

1975 – Ella Grasso became the governor of Connecticut. She was the first woman to become a governor of a state without a husband preceding her in the governor’s chair.

1982 – American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) settled the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies.

1982 – The U.S. Justice Department withdrew an antitrust suit against IBM.

1987 – The Dow Jones industrial average closed over the 2000 mark for the first time at 2,002.25.

1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush collapsed during a state dinner in Tokyo. White House officials said Bush was suffering from stomach flu.

1993 – Bosnian President Izetbegovic visited the U.S. to plead his government’s case for Western military aid and intervention to halt Serbian aggression.

1994 – Tonya Harding won the ladies’ U.S. Figure Skating Championship in Detroit, MI, a day after Nancy Kerrigan dropped out because of a clubbing attack that injured her right knee. The U.S. Figure Skating Association later took the title from Harding because of her involvement in the attack.

1997 – Mister Rogers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 – Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life in prison for his role of mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing in New York.

1998 – Scientists announced that they had discovered that galaxies were accelerating and moving apart and at faster speeds.

1999 – The top two executives of Salt Lake City’s Olympic Organizing Committee resigned amid disclosures that civic boosters had given cash to members of the International Olympic Committee.

1999 – British Prime Minister Tony Blair concluded a three-day visit to South Africa.

2005 – The rate for U.S. First Class mail was raised to 39¢.

2009 – In Egypt, archeologists entered a 4,300 year old pyramid and discovered the mummy of Queen Sesheshet.

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