Today in HisStory – December 18

In the Battle of the Trebia, Hannibal’s Carthaginian outnumbered army heavily defeated Roman forces on Italian soil. (218 BC)

Kublai Khan renamed his empire Yuan marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China. (1271)

John Philpot, before being martyred by being burned at the stake, joyfully kissed the stake and quoted Scripture. (1555)

The Mayflower docked at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its passengers prepared to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony. (1620)

English parliament accepted Protestation unanimously. (1621)

Covenanter minister Hugh McCall is brought into court, found guilty, and condemned to hang for his resistance to the authority claimed by the king over the Scottish church. (1666)

Thomas Fleet published Mother Goose’s Melodies For Children. (1719)

American Revolutionary War: The new United States celebrated its first national day of Thanksgiving commemorating the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga. (1777)

New Jersey ratified the US constitution and became the third US state. (1787)

George Washington’s body was interred at Mount Vernon. (1799)

War of 1812: British took Fort Niagara. (1813)

Young George Müller was jailed on theft charges. Years later, he would start Christian orphanages all over England. (1821)

Emory College was chartered. (1834)

US Civil War: The Confederates won the Battle of Lexington, Kentucky. (1862)

The 13th Amendment was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution ending slavery in the US. (1865)

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet Nutcracker Suite premiered. (1892)

Sundar Singh, an Indian mystic, saw a vision of Christ and converted to Christianity.  (1904)

US President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Galt, a descendant of Pocahontas. He had been widowed a year earlier. (1915)

The Bolshevik Communists under Lenin ruled that marriage was a civil law not a religious ordinance, creating an avenue for persecution of the church. (1917)

The 18th Amendment, authorizing prohibition of alcohol, was approved by the US congress and sent to the states for ratification. (1917)

World’s first nuclear power plant began to generate electricity at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, USA. (1957)

Project SCORE, world’s first communications satellite, was launched from Cape Canaveral. (1958)

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas aired for first time on CBS. (1966)

Vietnam War: US began its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam. (1972)

HTML 4.0 was published by the World Wide Web Consortium. (1997)

NASA launched into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS, and MOPITT. (1999)

Advertisements

Today in HisStory – December 17

Pope Clemens VII published Decree Cum ad zero which formed the Inquisition. (1526)

Pope Paul II excommunicated King Henry VIII of England after the divorce of his first wife Catherine and subsequent marriage to Ann Boleyn. (1538)

American Revolutionary War: France became the First Nation to recognize independence of the United States. (1777)

American Revolutionary War: George Washington’s army returned to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. (1777)

First impeachment trial against a US senator, William Blount of Tennessee, began. (1798)

Kentucky abolished debtors’ prisons. (1821)

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published. (1843)

New Ellis Island Immigration Station was completed. (1900)

The Wright Brothers make the first sustained motorized aircraft flight at 10:35 AM. It was piloted by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. (1903)

William Borden (Borden of Yale) boarded a ship for Africa, after giving up his family fortune, to work as a missionary among Muslims. The rich young man died in Egypt before his work began. (1912)

Jews were expelled from Tel Aviv by Turkish authorities. (1914)

Confiscation of the property of the Russian Orthodox Church and abolition of religious instruction in schools was announced by the Communist Bolshevik government of Russia under Lenin. (1917)

The first orphanage founded by the Church of God opened in Cleveland, Tennessee. (1920)

Colonel William “Billy” Mitchell, founder of US Air Force, was court-martialed for insubordination. (1925)

WW2: Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was relieved of his command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet as part of a shake-up of officers in the wake of the Pearl Harbor disaster. (1941)

Czechoslovakian bishops declared their nation’s November 1st, 1949 law regarding religion was in contradiction to the law of God. (1949)

US Federal Communications Commission approved RCA’s black and white compatible color TV specifications. (1953)

Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, vanished under mysterious circumstances while swimming near Melbourne.. (1967)

Muslim terrorists shot passengers on Boeing 737 to Kuwait. (1973)

Mrs Davina Thompson made medical history by having the first heart, lung, and liver transplant at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England. (1986)

Today in HisStory – December 16

Catherine of Aragon, first wife of King Henry VIII, was born.  (1485)

King Francois I ordered a renewed pursuit of Protestants. (1538)

Mount Vesuvious, Italy erupted. It destroyed six villages and killed 4,000. (1631)

Parliamentarian General Oliver Cromwell was appointed as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. (1653)

English Parliament passed a Bill of Rights establishing limits on crown powers and requirement for regular elections. (1689)

Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan took place. (1707)

George Whitefield, first Great Awakening preacher, was born. (1714)

Ludwig Von Beethoven was born. (1770)

American Revolutionary War: Sons of Liberty threw tea into the Boston Harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party. (1773)

Author Jane Austin was born. (1775)

American Revolutionary War: Articles of Confederation, US first constitution, was ratified by first state – Virginia. (1777)

Napoleon Bonaparte divorced Empress Joséphine by French Senate. (1809)

Fire consumed over 600 buildings in New York City including the business of the Tappan Brothers, Christian businessmen who supported abolition, Charles Finney crusades, and other Christian causes. (1835)

US Civil War: Braxton Bragg was replaced by Joseph E. Johnston as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. (1863)

US Civil War: Battle of Nashville ended in a Union victory after 4400 casualties. (1864)

Amy Carmichael, Scotch-Irish missionary, was born. She went to India and remained there without furlough until her death 56 years later. An invalid her last 20 years, she worked to rescue children from Hindu cult prostitution and founded the Dohnavur Fellowship. (1867)

The Colored Methodist Church of America, now known as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, was established. (1870)

First submarine with an internal combustion engine was demonstrated. (1897)

Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead was born. (1901)

As a gesture of the US’s new presence as a world power, US President Theodore Roosevelt sent the US Battle Fleet on a round-the-world cruise, visiting ports internationally. (1907)

In the First Balkan War, the Ottoman Navy was defeated by the Royal Hellenic Navy at the Battle of Eli. (1912)

Charlie Chaplin began his film career at Keystone for $150 a week. (1913)

WW1: German battleships under Franz Von Hipper bombarded the English ports of Hartlepool and Scarborough. (1914)

Grigori Efimovich, known as  Rasputin for influencing the Russian Zsar and his wife for evil, was assassinated. (1916)

In Russia, John Pyankov and Alexis Saburov of the Resurrection church in Perm and Nicholas Yakhontov of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius church were tortured and drowned in the Kama River. Saburov had been dragged from his bed and driven across the snow in his underwear with a noose around his neck before being tied to an iron bed frame and cast into the water. (1918)

8.5 earthquake rocked the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000. (1920)

Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempted to escape from American federal prison Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Neither was ever seen again. (1937)

WW2: Battle of the Bulge, last major battle with the Nazis, took place. (1944)

WW2: Betsie ten Boom, sister Corrie ten Boom, died in Ravensbrück concentration camp, near Berlin. Both sisters had been involved in hiding Jews from Nazi persecutors. (1944)

US President Harry Truman proclaimed a state of emergency against Communist Imperialism. (1950)

First White House Press Conference included President Eisenhower and 161 reporters. (1953)

US kidnap victim John Paul Getty III was freed after a ransom was paid by grandfather John Paul Getty. (1973)

Cleveland, Ohio became the first post-Depression era city to default on its loans. It owed $14,000,000 to local banks. (1978)

Colonel Sanders died. (1980)

Operation Desert Fox: The United States and United Kingdom bombed targets in Iraq. (1998)

Today in HisStory – December 15

Byzantine general Belisarius defeated the Vandals at the Battle of Ticameron. (533 AD)

Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal after becoming first known European to sail round Cape of Good Hope. (1488)

The press of Henri Estienne in Paris published Jacobus Faber Lefèvre’s Commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul. Lefèvre taught justification by faith alone. Luther based his Pauline lectures on Lefèvre’s.  (1512)

German Astronomer Simon Marius was the first to observe Andromeda galaxy through a telescope. (1612)

Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, married Mary Barnard, daughter of a Puritan clergyman. (1629)

The English colonized Connecticut. (1664)

Peter Bohler, Moravian missionary to America, founder of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the man who led John Wesley to Christ, and one of the first men to educate Indians and Blacks, was ordained by Count von Zinzendorf, leader of the Moravians. (1737)

First US law school was established at University of Pennsylvania. (1791)

The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution guaranteeing basic civil rights including religious liberty, was ratified. (1791)

French Revolution: Revolutionary Tribunal was abolished in France. (1794)

Napoleon Bonaparte received a French state funeral in Paris 19 years after his death. (1840)

US Civil War: During the Battle of Nashville, the Confederate Army of Tennessee was nearly destroyed when a Union army swarmed rebel trenches. (1864)

Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. (1877)

The great Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, was killed by Indian police at the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. (1890)

Stephen M. Balzer was granted a patent for a gasoline-powered motor buggy. (1896)

Swiss pilot Walter Mittelholzer was the first to fly over Mt. Kilimanjaro. (1929)

Groundbreaking began for Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. (1938)

Gone With the Wind premiered in Atlanta. (1939)

First commercial manufacture of nylon yarn took place in Seaford, Delaware. (1939)

WW2: Bandleader Glenn Miller’s plane disappeared over the English Channel. (1944)

WW2: General Eisenhower was the first general to receive a fifth star. (1944)

New York City’s Port Authority opened. (1950)

Canada adopted the maple leaf flag. (1964)

Walt Disney died. (1966)

Soviet Venera 7 was the first spacecraft to land on another planet. It landed on Venus. (1970)

Jean Paul Getty III, the grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, was found alive near Naples, five months after his kidnapping. (1973)

John Williams gave his final appearance as conductor of the Boston Pops. (1993)

U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary recommended the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors. (1998)

Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened after a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to fortify the tower without eliminating its famous lean. (2001)

Today in HisStory – December 14

Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, was significantly damaged by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake. (557 AD)

During St. Lucia’s Flood in Northwest Netherlands, the Zuiderzee seawall collapsed. 50,000 lives were lost. It was the fifth largest recorded flood in history. (1287)

Sir John Oldcastle, a Lollard leader, was hung on a gallows and burned for his Wycliffian religious views. (1417)

Princess Mary Stuart succeeded her father James V and became Queen Mary I of Scotland at 6 days old. (1542)

Holland granted a patent on windmill with a crankshaft. (1593)

Oliver Cromwell announced his intent to welcome Jews to England with or without permission of the Parliament. (1655)

The first military academy in the world, the Theresian Military Academy, was founded in Austria. (1751)

American Revolutionary War: Portsmouth, New Hampshire militiamen successfully attacked the arsenal of Fort William & Mary. (1774)

First state road was authorized from Frankfort, Kentucky to Cincinnati, Ohio. (1793)

David Wilkinson of Rhode Island patented a nut and bolt machine. (1798)

First US President George Washington died in his home in Mount Vernon. (1799)

Alabama was admitted as the 22nd US state. (1819)

The Toledo War, a boundary dispute between Ohio and Michigan, unofficially ended when Michigan conceded the Toledo strip to Ohio in exchange for becoming a state. (1836)

Near midnight, the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral tolled the death at Windsor Castle of Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria. A Lutheran, Albert had striven to restore the moral tone of the British monarchy, and had introduced reforms into England to improve science, technology, education, military organization, and the lot of the working classes. (1861)

US Civil War: US President Abraham Lincoln granted of amnesty to his sister-in-law, the widow of a Confederate general. It was the first under Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which allowed for former Confederates to be granted amnesty if they took an oath to the United States. (1863)

Max Planck presented a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law sparking the birth of Quantum Physics. (1900)

South Pole was first reached by Norwegian Roald Amundsen. (1911)

WW2: Congress established the rank of General of Army – 5-star General. (1944)

United Nations General Assembly voted to establish UN Headquarters in New York City. (1946)

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR, was founded in Daytona Beach, Florida. (1947)

DNA was created in a test tube. (1967)

Blizzard ravages Navajo reservation in New Mexico killing 51. (1967)

Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta premiered in New York City. (1977)

The modern nation of Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights which had been captured from Syria during the 1967 War. (1981)

Twelve Croatian and Bosnian Christians in Algeria are murdered by Muslims in the Tamezguida region. (1993)

During the Yugoslav Wars, The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris by leaders of various governments ending the conflict in former Yugoslavia. (1995)

28 people, including 20 children, were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. (2012)

Today in HisStory – December 13

Lucy, a young Christian virgin, was executed for her faith. It was attempted to force her into prostitution, but she refused. (304 AD)

Sir Francis Drake set sail from England to sail around world. (1577)

The first American furs to be exported from North America left for England. (1621)

The Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. It is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard. (1636)

Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted the South Island of present day New Zealand. (1642)

American Revolutionary War: 400 attacked Fort William and Mary in New Hampshire. This was the first incident of the war. (1774)

Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of US President Abraham Lincoln, was born. (1818)

Phillips Brooks, author of O Little Town of Bethlehem, was born. (1835)

US Civil War: During Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederates led by General Lee defeated the Union Army. (1862)

British and German ships bombarded Venezuelan forts after President Castro refused to comply with ultimatum demanding damages caused during his takeover of the government in 1899. Castro asked US President Theodore Roosevelt to arbitrate. (1902)

WW1: German chancellor Bernhard von Bulow disbanded the Parliament. (1906)

WW1: Avalanche killed 10,000 Austrian and Italian troops in 24 hours in Tyrol. (1916)

WW1: US army of occupation crossed the Rhine and entered Germany. (1918)

Francis G. Pease’s interferometer at Mount Wilson Observatory was the first to measure the diameter of a star – the Betelgeuse. (1920)

Dick Van Dyke was born. (1925)

Clip-on tie was designed. (1928)

WW2: Japanese kamikaze crashed into the US cruiser Nashville and killed 138. (1944)

James Dean began his career with an appearance in a Pepsi commercial. (1950)

John Ajayi Agbona founded the Christ Apostolic Mission Church Oke-Igbala. Many miracles accompanied his ministry and the denomination spread into several other countries. (1952)

Vietnam War: First US bombing of Hanoi took place. (1965)

Al Gore conceded the presidential election. (2000)

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured near his home town of Tikrit. (2003)

Today in HisStory – December 12

At the Battle at Nineveh, Byzantine Emperor Heraclius defeated Perzen. (627 AD)

Isabella crowned herself queen of Castile and Aragon. (1474)

South Carolina colony passed a Sunday Law requiring everyone to attend church each Sunday and to refrain from skilled labor or suffer a 10-shilling fine and/or a two-hour lock-up in the village stocks. (1712)

Stephen Parker, Ebenezer Hinsdell, and Joseph Seccombe were ordained at Old South Church in Boston to be missionaries to the American Indians. (1733)

Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify US constitution and became the second US State. (1787)

Bank of US opened. (1791)

Ludwig Von Beethoven received his first lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn. (1792)

Washington, D.C. was established as the capital of the US. (1800)

Bible Society of Philadelphia was organized as the first of its kind in America. (1808)

French invasion of Russia came to an end. (1812)

Mexico was officially recognized as an independent nation by the US. (1822)

Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio signal. It was from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland, Canada. (1901)

Father Edward J. Flanagan established Boys Town for troubled and neglected children in Omaha, Nebraska. (1917)

WW2: Japanese government of Imukai formed. (1931)

WW2: German occupying army did a house search in Paris looking for Jews. (1941)

UN accepted 6 Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1946)

Tide detergent was introduced. (1946)

Willem J Kolff and his team at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic removed the heart from a dog and replaced it with a pneumatic pump which kept the dog alive for 90 minutes, proving the viability of the artificial heart. (1957)

WW2: Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes in Israel. (1961)

Martin Luther King Jr. and 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Georgia. (1961)

Frank Sinatra Jr was returned after being kidnapped. (1963)

A truck bomb exploded at the US Embassy in Kuwait. (1983)

United States Supreme Court released its decision in Bush v. Gore, ending the recount and making it possible for the electorate to cast its vote for Bush as president. (2000)

Today in HisStory – December 11

Llywelyn ab Gruffydd/Llywelyn the Last, the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, in South Wales. He reigned from 1259. (1282)

Martin Luther said no man could be saved unless he renounced the rule of the pope. (1520)

103 Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. (1620)

Myles Standish and a group of 18 settlers were attacked by 30 Native American. This became known as the First Encounter. (1620)

English Puritans introduced the Root and Branch Petition to Parliament demanding the English episcopacy, “with all its dependencies, roots and branches”, be abolished. (1640)

First display of Aurora Borealis in North American Colonies was recorded. (1790)

French Revolution: France’s King Louis XVI went on trial. He was accused of high treason and crimes against the state. (1792)

Joseph Mohr, author of Silent Night, was born in Salzburg. (1792)

Indiana became the 19th US state. (1816)

Annie Jump Cannon was born. She was the pioneering female astronomer who invented the stellar classification system and the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University. (1863)

Colored moving pictures were demonstrated at Madison Square Garden. (1909)

Lars Olsen Skrefsrud, famous Norwegian missionary, died. Once a thief, he had been converted to faith in Christ. In India he had translated the Bible into the Santal language and produced a hymnal using native tunes. He wrote textbooks, published a book of traditional Santal myths, founded schools that taught farming, animal care, and carpentry. He sought to establish a church the Santalese could run themselves. By his death, there were fifteen thousand or more Santal Christians. (1910)

Mona Lisa was recovered two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum. (1913)

WW1: 13 black soldiers were hanged for participation in the Houston Riot. (1917)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born. He was a Soviet dissident, writer, and Nobel prize winner. (1918)

Soviets cut to pieces Russian Orthodox deacon Constantine Zverev with sabres because he stood up in defense of a priest. (1920)

Great Depression: Bank of the United States closed in New York City. (1930)

Statute of Westminster gave complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland which was a free state, and Newfoundland which was not then part of Canada. (1931)

Edward VIII became the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne after the Church of England condemned his decision to marry to Wallace Simpson, an American divorcee. He announced it on a radio station. (1936)

WW2: New anti-Jewish measures were proclaimed in Poland. (1939)

WW2: Germany and Italy declared war on USA. (1941)

WW2: Dutch government in London declared war on Italy. (1941)

WW2: Japanese occupied Guam. (1941)

WW2: Japanese attacked Wake Island. (1941)

UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, was established. (1946)

British Physicist Cecil Frank Powell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his study of nuclear processes and the discovery of the pion. (1950)

Vietnam War: US President John F. Kennedy provided US military helicopters and crews to South Vietnam. (1961)

Che Guevara spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. An unknown terrorist fired a mortar shell at the building during the speech. (1964)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn, premiered in New York City. (1967)

The Libertarian Party of the United States was formed. (1971)

Magnum P.I. premiered on CBS. (1980)

13 died in an 83 vehicle accident near Chattanooga, Tennessee on I-75 due to fog. (1990)

Today in HisStory – December 10

Martin Luther publicly burned papal edict demanding he recant. (1520)

Kaspar Schwenkfeld, German theologian and reformer who influenced Anabaptist, Pietism, and Puritans, died. (1561)

Italian archaeologist Antonio Bosio, known as Columbus of the Catacombs, first descended into the subterranean Christian burial chambers located under the streets of Rome. (1593)

Isaac Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, was read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley. (1684)

Massachusetts Bay became the first American colonial government to borrow money. (1690)

American Revolutionary War: John Jay, the former chief justice of the New York Supreme Court, was elected president of the Continental Congress. (1778)

Metric system was adopted in France. It was the first country to do so. (1799)

Mississippi was admitted as 20th US state. (1817)

Poet Emily Dickinson was born.  (1830)

US Civil War: General Sherman’s armies reached Savannah, and the 12 day siege began. (1864)

First traffic lights were installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London. (1868)

Wyoming became the first US territory to grant women right to vote. (1869)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was first published in the UK and Canada. It wasn’t published in the US until February, 1885 due to printing error. (1884)

Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris formally ended the war. US acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. (1898)

First Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded to Jean Henri Dunant and Frederic Passy. (1901)

Nobel Prize for Physics were awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie for their research on radioactivity. (1903)

John William Strutt, known as Lord Rayleigh, and William Ramsay were presented with the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of Argon. (1904)

The Gift of the Magi, a short story by William Sydney Porter known as O. Henry, was first published. (1905)

US President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American awarded Nobel Peace Prize. (1906)

Ruyard Kipling received the Nobel prize for literature. (1907)

The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London took place. 1,000 medical students clashed with 400 police officers over the existence of a memorial for animals who have been vivisected. (1907)

Nobel peace prize was awarded to US President Woodrow Wilson. (1919)

August Krogh was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the regulation mechanisms of capillaries in skeletal muscle. (1920)

Danish physicist Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for work on the structure of atoms. (1922)

Willem Einthoven was awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for his invention of the electrocardiodogram. (1924)

WW2: The second part of Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published. (1926)

Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine were jointly awarded to Christiaan Eijkman and Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins for the discovery of vitamins. (1929)

Edward VIII signed the Instrument of Abdication in which he gave up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, (1936)

WW2: An early report the Holocaust prepared by the Polish government-in-exile, using information obtained by Witold Pilecki, was addressed to UN member states. (1942)

Maoist Communists burned a group of Christians to death in a seminary at Xiwanzi, China.  (1946)

Albert Schweitzer received the Nobel Peace Prize. (1954)

Six year old Donny Osmond’s singing debut was on Andy Williams Show. (1963)

Nobel Peace Prize was presented to Dr Martin Luther King Jr. in Oslo. (1964)

Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. (1978)

First planet outside our solar system was discovered. (1984)

The Fellowship of the Ring, Lord of the Rings film directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen, premiered in London. (2001)

US President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. (2009)

Today in HisStory – December 9

Deacon Robert Cushman preached the first recorded sermon on American soil and the first printed there. (1621)

American Revolutionary War: Colonel Benedict Arnold and General Richard Montgomery led an American force in the siege of Quebec. (1775)

American Revolutionary War: George Washington’s retreating army crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey and escaped capture from the advancing British forces. This was possible only because an unusual fog that covered the area. (1776)

Christian journalist Noah Webster published the first issue of American Minerva, the first daily newspaper in New York City. (1793)

Ludwig Von Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in A premiered. (1813)

Pope Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception of Mary an article of faith for the Catholic Church. (1854)

US Civil War: Abraham Lincoln announced his Amnesty Proclamation and his plan for Reconstruction of the South. (1863)

Stanley Smith and C. T. Studd, two of the Cambridge Seven, spoke at Edinburgh University. The meeting, which they had feared would be a flop, proved a time of great power. The Cambridge Seven were seven young men who had renounced fame and fortune to serve with the China Inland Mission. (1884)

Sister Anthony, known as the Angel of the Battlefield for her service to the wounded during the Civil War, passed away. (1897)

Christmas seals were sold for the first time to fight tuberculous. (1907)

The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Argentina expelled from its ranks Irish missionary James Stewart and some others who had adopted Pentecostal practices. (1911)

Japanese military police launched a violent suppression of the religious sect Oomoto for worshiping figures other than the emperor. (1935)

NAACP files suit to equalize salaries of black and white teachers. (1936)

Orthodox priest Sergius Mechiev was martyred by being shot in prison. He had rejected the atheistic and anti-ecclesiastical proclamations of the Soviet government and had to live in hiding for years. (1941)

WW2: US declared war on Japan and entered the war. (1941)

WW2: Great Britain declared war on Japan. (1941)

WW2: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his famous “date in infamy” speech about Pearl Harbor attack. (1941)

WW2: Dutch government-in-exile in London declared war on Japan. (1941)

Faith Healer Lilian Barbara Yeomans died. (1942)

Maoist Communists burned a group of Christians to death in a seminary at Xiwanzi, China. (1946)

114-day newspaper strike began in New York City. (1962)

US President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the UN in New York City. (1966)

US and USSR signed a treaty to prohibiting nuclear weapons in outer space. (1966)

Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., first black astronaut, diedduring training in a plane crash of an F-104 Starfighter. (1967)

John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, was shot and killed. (1980)

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of student organizations holding religious services at public colleges and universities. (1981)

Norman Mayer held the Washington Monument hostage claiming he had a explosives. He demanded an end to nuclear weapons. Is killed by police after 10 hrs. He had no explosives. (1982)

US President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev signed a treaty eliminating medium range nuclear missiles. (1987)

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

Astronaut and Senator John Glenn died. (2016)