On This Day in History... (December 1 -31)

[Da Grouch]

Things keep mysteriously disappearing from the board after I post them.

I'll try again with these missing items:

December 30

~1610 - The Blood Countess: Countess Elizabeth Báthory, possibly the most prolific female serial killer in history, was finally arrested at Čachtice Castle in the Kingdom of Hungary along with 4 of her servants who were accused of being her accomplices. She and her 4 collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which she was convicted was 80. Afterwards Báthory was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked into a set of rooms until her death 4 years later.

~1813 - During the War of 1812, British troops attacked and burnt the town of Buffalo, New York.

(I hope they don't go AWOL again...)

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[Da Grouch]

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~406 – A combined force of Vandals, Alans and Suebians defeated the defending Franks and crossed the Rhine river, beginning the Invasion of Gaul.

~535 – Byzantine forces under the command of General Belisarius completed the conquest of Sicily by defeating the Ostrogothic Garrison of Syracuse. (Some sources show this as occuring in late November 535.)

~1229 – The army of James I of Aragon the Conqueror entered Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma, Spain) concluding the Christian reconquest of the island of Majorca.

~1600 – The British East India Company received its charter.

~1687 – The first organized group of Huguenots set sail from Holland to the Dutch East India Company post at the Cape of Good Hope.

~1695 – A Window Tax was imposed in England. This caused many shopkeepers to brick up their windows to avoid paying the tax.

~1759 – Arthur Guinness signed a (up to) 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin. Guiness is still brewed there to this day.

~1775 – The 6th Battle of Quebec: British forces repulsed an attack by Continental Army troops under General Richard Montgomery.

~1853 – A New Year's dinner party was held inside an unfinished life size model of an Iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen at the Crystal Palace in south London.

Woodcut of the famous banquet in the Crystal Palace Iguanodon, New Year's Eve 1853.

Image from The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs; artist unknown


~1857 – Queen Victoria was asked to choose a common capital for the Province of Canada (modern day Ontario and Quebec) and chose Ottawa.

~1862 – Abraham Lincoln signed an enabling act that would admit West Virginia to the Union, thereby dividing Virginia in two.

~1862 - The ironclad warship USS Monitor sank in heavy seas off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina while under tow by the side-wheeler steamer USS Rhode Island. 16 seamen were lost in the mishap.

Line engraving published in "Harper's Weekly", 1863, depicting USS Monitor
sinking in a storm off Cape Hatteras on the night of 30-31 December 1862.
A boat is taking off crewmen, and USS Rhode Island is in the background.


Image courtesy the United States Naval History and Heritage Command


~1862 – Union forces commanded by Gen. William S. Rosecrans won a decisive victory over a Confederate army under Gen. braxton Braggat the Battle of Stones River, fought near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.


~1879 – Thomas A. Edison delighted an audience in Menlo Park, New Jersey when he gave his first public demonstration of incandescent lighting.

~1904 – The first New Year's Eve celebration to be held at Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in New York City took place.

~1909 – The Manhattan Bridge opened.

The Manhattan Bridge on September 20th, 2007 as seen from Empire State Park, Brooklyn

Photo by David Torres


~1923 – The chimes of Big Ben were broadcast on radio for the first time by the BBC.

An engraving of (the second) Big Ben
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/Big-ben-1858.jpg (broken link)
Image taken from The Illustrated News of the World (December 4th, 1858)


~1946 – President Harry Truman officially proclaimed the end of hostilities in World War II. (A little slow in figuring that one out, were you, Harry?)

~1951 – The Marshall Plan expired but not until after distributing more than $13.3 billion US in foreign aid to rebuild Europe following the Second World War.

~1955 – General Motors became the first US corporation to earn more than one billion dollars in a single year. The company’s annual report to stockholders listed a net income of $1,189,477,082 in revenues.

~1960 – Originally minted as early as 1216, the farthing coin ceased to be legal tender in the United Kingdom after a run of at least 744 years.

2 sided view of an Edward I farthing from the London mint (dated 1279)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Edward-i-farthing.jpg (broken link)
Photo by Brad Shepherd


~1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapsed and split into Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.

~1967 - Playing in a wind chill of -40 degrees, Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers won the National Football League championship game by defeating Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys, 21-17. The game, played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin is often referred to as the Ice Bowl. During the game the whistles of the referees actually froze to their lips. It turned out to be the coldest championship game ever.

~1972 - Dick Clark's first Rockin' New Years Eve aired on ABC, starring Three Dog Night, Al Green and Blood, Sweat & Tears.

~1972 - Baseball great Roberto Clemente was killed in a plane crash near San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was accompanying supplies being flown to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. He was 38 years old.

~1975 - Elvis Presley performed before 60,000 fans at the Silverdome, in Pontiac, Michigan. He earned $800,000 for the concert; a then world record for a single concert by a single artist.

~1981 РA coup d'̩tat in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaced it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.

~1983 – The AT&T Bell System was broken up by the United States Government.

~1984 - Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen crashed his Corvette on the A57 outside Sheffield, England. He lost his left arm in the accident.

~1985 - Died this day: Ricky Nelson, rock and roll singer and former child star of his parents' 1950's TV family show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, near DeKalb, Texas at the age of 45. Nelson was killed along with his fiancee and 5 others when his chartered DC-3 caught fire and crashed. A faulty cabin heater was eventually determined to be the cause of the blaze.

~1986 – A fire was deliberately set by 3 disgruntled employees of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico that were in the middle of a labor dispute with the owners of the hotel. In the end, the fire claimed 97 lives and caused 140 injuries.

~1992 – Czechoslovakia was formally dissolved, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

~1997 - Died this day: Michael Kennedy, the 39 year old son of late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In a skiing accident on Aspen Mountain in Colorado.

~1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism froze the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and established the value of the euro currency.

~1999 – Boris Yeltsin resigned as President of Russia leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President.

~1999 – Five hijackers, who had been holding 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane, left the plane with 2 Islamic clerics that they had demanded be freed.

~1999 – The United States Government handed control of the Panama Canal and all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties.

~2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101 took place in Taipei, Taiwan. The tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, it stands at 509 metres (1,670 ft) high.

Taipei 101 (taken on August 28th, 2007)

Photo by Connor Powell


~2007 – After 16 years the massive Big Dig construction project in Boston, Massachusetts was finally completed.

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This is the last posting in this thread.

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[pgrdr]

I love these! All of them!

Thanks so much for taking the time to create and post these timelines, photos, and even music.