On this day in History - Dec. 07

• 43 a.c .- Morte do filósofo romano Cícero (Marcus Tullius). Advogado e político é considerado o mais importante filósofo romano.
• 1493 - Columbus left the ruined settlement of La Navidad and sailed east for a month till he reached the site that became La Isabela in the Dominican Republic.
• 1542 - Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland (1560-1587), was born.
• 1598 - Giovanni "Gian" Lorenzo Bernini (d. Nov 28, 1680), Italian sculptor, painter, architect, was born. He was the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and worked under the patronage of Pope Urban VII. His work included the “Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” “David” and “Daphne and Apollo.”
• 1637 - Barnardo Pasquini, composer, was born.
• 1741 - Elisabeth Petrovna became tsarina of Russia.
• 1761 - Madame Tussaud [Marie Grosholtz], creator of the wax museum, was born.
• 1783 - Theatre Royal opens in Covent Garden, London
• 1787 - Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
• 1796 - Electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the United States.
• 1808 - James Madison was elected president in succession to Thomas Jefferson.
• 1810 - Theodor Schwann, German physiologist, was born.
• 1823 - Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician (Tensor of Kronecker), was born.
• 1835 - German railway Nurnberg-Furth opened.
• 1836 - Martin Van Buren (d.1862) was elected the eighth president of the United States and served one term. He was known as the “Little Magician” and the “Red Fox of Kinderhook.”
• 1840 - Hermann Goetz, composer, was born.
• 1862 - Confederate forces surprise Union troops at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
• 1863- Pietro Mascagni, Italian composer, was born (d. in 1945) - Composer of Cavalleria Rusticana
• 1873 - America’s first international football (soccer) game was played in New Haven, CT. Yale defeated Eton (England) 2-1.
• 1873- Willa Cather (d.1947), American author famous for “O Pioneers” and “My Antonia,” was born. "I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."
• 1883 - Ladies’ Home Journal was published for the first time. It became one of the few magazines to reach a circulation of over one million. Paid circulation is currently over 4,000,000.
• 1888 - Joyce Cary (d.1957), Irish-born novelist (The Horse's Mouth), was born. "It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know -- and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything."
• 1888 - Ernst Toch, composer and pianist, was born.
• 1889 - Chega a Lisboa o ex-imperador do Brasil, Pedro II, deposto pela proclamação da República.
• 1889 - Gilbert and Sullivan’s "Gondoliers," premiered in London.
• 1895 - Sir Milton Margay, first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, was born.
• 1896 - Stuart Davis, painter, was born.
• 1902 - The 8¢ Martha Washington stamp was issued this day. The stamp was the first U.S. definitive or commemorative stamp to feature a woman.
• 1905 - Gerard Kuiper, Dutch-US astronomer (moons of Uranus, Neptune), was born.
• 1909 - Dr. Leo H. Baekeland patented Bakelite, the 1st completely synthetic plastic thermosetting plastic.
• 1916 - The British government of David Lloyd George formed.
• 1917 - U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary in World War I, with only one dissenting vote in Congress and became the 13th country to do so.
• 1924 Mário Soares Portuguese politician Socialist,was born; premier of Portugal (1976-78, 1983-1985) and President of the Republic (1986-1996)
• 1925 - Swimmer Johnny Weissmuller set a world record in the 150-yard freestyle with a time of 1 minute, 25 and 2/5 seconds -- in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Johnny went on to fame swinging from vines as ‘King of the Jungle’, Tarzan, in movies.
• 1926 - Victor Kermit Kiam II CEO (Remington shavers), NFL owner (Patriots), was born.
• 1926 - A gas refrigerator was patented.
• 1926 - The military right-wing opposition executed a coup d’etat in Lithuania and a dictatorship was established under Antanas Smetona, who remained president until the country was annexed by the USSR in 1940.
• 1928 - Noam Chomsky, writer, linguist and political activist, was born.
• 1931 - A report indicated that Nazis would ensure "Nordic dominance" by sterilizing certain races.
• 1932 - Ellen Burstyn, American actress
• 1933 - President Roosevelt adopted a “good neighbor” policy toward Latin America and announced a policy of nonintervention in Latin American affairs at the December 7th International American Conference at Montevideo, Uruguay.
• 1934 - Wiley Post discovered the jet stream.
• 1937 - Russian chess player Aljechin recaptures world title from Max Euwe
• 1939 - Lou Gehrig, 36, was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame.
• 1941 -At 7:50 a.m. Japan launched an aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, the home base of the U.S. Pacific fleet, and forced US entry into the war. Relations between Japan and the United States had been strained for a decade as both nations sought to dominate the Pacific. Long aware that a Japanese surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor could precede war, U.S. authorities were still woefully unprepared when 363 Japanese fighters, dive-bombers and torpedo planes sunk or damaged eight battleships and three light cruisers, destroyed 188 planes and killed 2,400 men in just over two hours. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced December 7, 1941, as a "date which will live in infamy" as he asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
• 1941 - At 2:20 p.m. the "Final Memorandum" document was delivered to Sec. of State Cordell Hull in Washington DC. In it Japan notified the US that it was "impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations."
• 1941 - Australian bombers landed on Timor and Ambon.
• 1941 - The 1st Japanese submarine was sunk by a US ship, the USS Ward.
• 1942 - Harry Chapin, rock vocalist (Taxi, Cat's in the Cradle), was born in NYC.
• 1942 - The U.S. Navy launched the USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.
• 1945 - The microwave oven was patented. Percy Spencer accidentally discovered that microwaves would also heat food. Spencer, an eighth-grade dropout and electronic wizard, worked for the Raytheon Manufacturing Corporation of Massachusetts developing a radar machine using microwave radiation.
• 1946 - The president of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, ordered all striking miners back to work.
• 1946 - America’s worst hotel fire broke out at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, killing 119 people, including hotel founder W. Frank Winecoff.
• 1947 - Johnny Bench, baseball catcher (Reds), was born.
• 1948 - Yoko Morishita, prima ballerina (Baterina No Habataki), was born.
• 1949 - Tom Waits, Calif, rocker and song writer (Blue Valentine), was born.
• 1949 - Tom Waitssinger: Shiver Me Timbers, Diamonds on My Windshield, Small Change, The Piano Has Been Drinking, Tom Traubert’s Blues, Burma Shave, Potter’s Field, Jersey Girl, LP: Foreign Affairs, Swordfishtrombone; songwriter: I Never Talk to Strangers; actor: Short Cuts, Paradise Alley, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ironweed, The Cotton Club; playwright [w/wife, Kathleen Brennan]: Frank’s Wild Years , was born
• 1949 - The A.F.L. and the C.I.O. organized a non-Communist international trade union.
• 1949 - The Nationalist Chinese government escaped to Formosa.
• 1953 - Audrey Hepburn was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.
• 1953 - Israel's PM Ben-Gurion retired.
• 1956 - Larry Bird, American basketball player for the Boston Celtics, was born. Rookie of the Year [1979-80]; NBA MVP [1984, 1985, 1986], AP Male Athlete of the Year [1986], Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year [1986]
• 1960 - Ivory Coast claims independence from France
• 1962 - Great Britain performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
• 1968 - The first orbiting astronomical observatory, OAO-2, was launched.
• 1970 - Rube Goldberg (87), US cartoonist (Mike & Ike, Pulitzer 1948), died.
• 1970 - Poland and West Germany signed a pact renouncing use of force to settle disputes, recognizing the Oder-Neisse River as Poland's western frontier, and acknowledging transfer to Poland of 40,000 square miles of former German territory.
• 1972 - America's final moon mission, Apollo 17, blasted off from Cape Canaveral. at 12:33 a.m. and landed on the moon December 11 at 3:15 p.m..
• 1972 - In Northern Ireland Jean McConville was abducted from her home in Belfast and was never seen alive again. In 1999 the IRA admitted responsibility and revealed the location of her body.
• 1972 - Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was stabbed and seriously wounded by an assailant who was then shot dead by her bodyguards.
• 1975 - Indonesia invaded East Timor, nine days after the Timorese political party Fretilin claimed independence leading to a 25-year occupation. Some 600,000 were left dead after this prolonged war.
• 1978 - Shiri Appleby actress: Roswell, ER, Blood Vows: The Story of a Mafia Wife, I Love You to Death, The Thirteenth Floor, A Time for Dancing , was born
• 1981 -Spain became a member of NATO.
• 1982 -Convicted murderer Charlie Brooks Junior became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas. Brooks, convicted of murdering an auto mechanic, received an intravenous injection of sodium pentathol.
• 1983 -Edgar Graham, member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, was shot dead by IRA.
• 1983 - In Madrid, Spain, an Aviaco DC-9 collided on a runway with an Iberia Air Lines Boeing 727 that was accelerating for takeoff, killing all 42 people aboard the DC-9 and 51 aboard the Iberia jet.
• 1984 - Michael Jackson was in Chicago to testify that the song, The Girl is Mine, was exclusively his and he didn’t swipe the song, Please Love Me Now. It was a copyright infringement case worth five million dollars. He won.
• 1986 - Pres. Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti.
• 1987 - A Unesco anuncia que Brasília é um Património Cultural da Humanidade.
• 1987 - Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev set foot on American soil for the first time, arriving for a Washington summit with President Reagan.
• 1987 - Forty-three people were killed in the crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines jetliner in California after a gunman apparently opened fire on a fellow passenger and the two pilots.
• 1988 - A major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia; an estimated 25,000-55,000 people died.
• 1989 - East Germany's Communist Party agreed to cooperate with the opposition in paving the way for free elections and a revised constitution.
• 1990 - As President Bush arrived in Venezuela on the last stop of his South American tour, his chief spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, warned Iraq that there was “no lessening in the threat of war,” despite Iraq’s promise to release its hostages.
• 1991 - Fifty years after Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a visibly moved President Bush led the nation in services commemorating the anniversary.
• 1992- The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a Mississippi abortion law that required women to get counseling and then wait 24 hours before terminating their pregnancies.
• 1993 -Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary revealed that the government had conducted more than 200 nuclear weapons tests in secret.
• 1993 - Conselho Multirracial assume o governo da África do Sul.
• 1993 - A gunman opened fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, killing six people and wounding 17.
• 1994 - PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Gaza City, pledged to protect Israelis from militant extremists.
• 1995 - Bill Gates announced Microsoft’s Internet counterattack [on Netscape and the browser market].
• 1995 - A 746-pound probe from the Galileo spacecraft hurtled into Jupiter's atmosphere, sending back data to the mothership before it was presumably destroyed.
• 1995 - US paratrooper James N. Burmeister (21) shot and killed Jackie Burden and Michael James. He was convicted on Feb 27, 1997 of 1st degree murder and conspiracy in the hate crime and faced the death penalty. The jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of death so the judge sentenced him to 2 consecutive life terms in prison. He will have to serve at least 50 years before becoming eligible for parole. Malcolm Wright, a fellow soldier, was also charged in the murders and convicted on May 2, 1997.
• 1995 - 5000 Serbs protested in Serajevo against the US brokered peace accord. They were opposed to control by the Bosnian-Croat federation.
• 1996 - The space shuttle Columbia landed at the Kennedy Space Center, ending a nearly 18-day mission marred by a jammed hatch that prevented two planned spacewalks.
• 1996 - Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The hit, from her Secrets album, stayed at number one half-way thru Feb 1997.
• 1997 -Republicans threatened Attorney General Janet Reno with contempt of Congress over her decision to forgo an independent counsel's investigation of White House campaign fund raising.
• 1997 - Singer Bob Dylan, actor Charlton Heston, actress Lauren Bacall, opera singer Jessye Norman and ballet master Edward Villella shared the 20th annual Kennedy Center Honors in Washington D.C.
• 1997 - A new Presidential Decision Directive was reported to replace on put into place by Pres. Reagan in 1981. It reset the guidelines for the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons would still be maintained as a deterrent.
• 1997 - It was reported that some 19 sperm whales washed up along the Danish and German North Sea coasts over the last several weeks.
• 1997 -It was reported that the world’s tiger population was down to 6000, from 100,000 a century ago. 5 of 8 subspecies are left: Indian (Bengal), Sumatran, Chinese, Indo-Chinese and Amur (Siberian).
• 1997 - In Serbia elections failed to elect a president with a 50% majority. Milan Milutinovic, an ally of Slobodan Milosevic received 42% and Vojislav Seselj, a former paramilitary leader, had 33%. Vuk Draskovic received 16% and threatened to call a boycott in a Dec 21 runoff.
• 1998 - Pres. Clinton announced the removal of Iran from the list of drug problem countries due to an energetic campaign to eliminate opium poppies.
• 1998 - On the eve of historic hearings, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde said there was a "compelling case" for impeaching President Clinton. Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of President Clinton over 1996 campaign financing.
• 1998 - South Carolina ended its participation in the antitrust case against Microsoft.
• 1998 - The UN agreed to give Cambodia’s UN seat to the new government.
• 1998 - In Chechnya a rescue attempt was made to free 4 men kidnapped Oct 3. The action led to the murder of the 4 men whose severed heads were found the next day.
• 1998 - On the secessionist Comoros island of Anjouan separatist militias broke a short cease fire and some 10 people were reported killed.
• 1998 - Congolese rebels dismissed the tentative truce worked out in Paris by UN Sec. Gen’l. Kofi Annan.
• 1998 - In Russia Pres. Yeltsin left the hospital, fired several aides and returned to the hospital to recover from pneumonia.
• 1999 - In Germany Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder won re-election as leader of the Social Democrats.
• 1999 - In Holland a student (17) in Veghel shot and wounded a teacher and 4 fellow students in the 1st school shooting in Dutch history. The student was reported to have been upset over a romance. The student's father (35) and sister (15) were arrested 2 days later as accessories.
• 2000 - Al Gore's lawyer, David Boies, pleaded with the Florida Supreme Court to order vote recounts and revive his presidential campaign. Republican attorneys called George W. Bush the certified, rightful victor.
• 2000 - Some 4,000 protestors clashed with police at the opening of the EU summit in Nice.
• 2000 - In Ghana presidential elections were held. Representatives for the 200-seat parliament were also chosen. Opposition candidate John Agyekum Kuffuor led Vice Pres. John Atta Mills 48-44% in the 1st round of elections. A runoff vote was planned within 3 weeks.
• 2000 - In India indigenous rebels massacred 30 Hindi-speaking people in Assam state.
  2000 In Indonesia a separatist mob attacked a police station in Jayapura, Irian Jaya, and 2 officers were killed.
• 2000 - In the Philippines the Senate began the impeachment trial of Pres. Estrada.
• 2001 - The US called to cut off discussions about enforcing a 1972 Biological Weapons Convention on the final day of a 3-week conference in Geneva. The conference sought binding measures and disbanded in chaos.
• 2001 - In New Jersey nearly 230 teachers were ordered freed from jail after their union agreed to end the 9-day strike and go into mediation.
• 2001 - In Afghanistan Taliban soldiers fled Kandahar and left the city in chaos. Day 62: Assaults continued around Tora Bora where up to 2,000 bin Laden loyalists were positioned at a mountain redoubt.
• 2001 - Statistics Canada reported a jobless increase to 7.5%, the highest level since mid-1999.
• 2001 - Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a Palestinian security compound in Gaza and into the Arafat Police City. Arafat said his forces had arrested 17 of 33 militants wanted by Israel.
• 2001 - In Sri Lanka Pres. Kumaratunga called on Ranil Wickremesinghe, head of the United National Party, to form a government. The UNP promised to pursue peace talks with Tamil rebels.