December 10

Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. 

– Proverbs 8:34

December is:

International Calendar Awareness Month - Most calendars are purchased in the month of December. January and November are also big selling months for calendars. Sponsor: Calendar Marketing Association.

Born on this Day

• 1538: Battista Guarini, Italian court poet, playwright
  

• 1787: Francis Gallaudet, founder of the first free school for the deaf
  

• 1805: William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist and journalist who eventually rejected Christianity because of the indifference of clergy to slavery.
  

• 1822: Cesar Franck, Liege, Belgium. He would become an acclaimed organist and a popular professor at the Paris Conservatoire, though his compositions were sometimes controversial. Today we remember Franck mostly for his Symphony in D.
  

• 1824: Scottish writer and poet George MacDonald, whose fairy tales and mythopoetic novels inspired C.S. Lewis and others.
  

• 1830: Poet Emily Dickinson
  

• 1851: Librarian Melvil Dewey
  

• 1908: French composer Olivier Messiaen, born in Avignon (died 1992).
  

• 1911: TV newscaster Chet Huntley
  

• 1913: American composer and conductor, Morton Gould, born in Richmond Hill, New York.
  

• 1914: Actress Dorothy Lamour
  

• 1923: Actor Harold Gould
  

• 1930: Former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter
  

• 1933: Actor Mako
  

• 1938: Russian conductor, Yuri Temirkanov. He was appointed director of Leningrad Philharmonic in 1988.
  

• 1941: Actor Tommy Kirk
  

• 1941: Actor Tim Considine
  

• 1941: Actress Fionnula Flannagan
  

• 1943: Pop singer Chad Stuart (Chad and Jeremy)
  

• 1946: Actress-singer Gloria Loring
  

• 1947: Pop-funk musician Walter "Clyde" Orange (The Commodores)
  

• 1948: Rhythm-and-blues singer Ralph Tavares
  

• 1948: Rhythm-and-blues singer Jessica Cleaves (Friends of Distinction)
  

• 1951: Country singer Johnny Rodriguez
  

• 1952: Actress Susan Dey
  

• 1960: Actor-director Kenneth Branagh
  

• 1961: Actress Nia Peeples
  

• 1965: Rock singer-musician J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.)
  

• 1970: Country singer Kevin Sharp
  

• 1971: Rock musician Scot (cq) Alexander (Dishwalla)
  

• 1972: Singer Puff Johnson
  

• 1980: Violinist Sarah Chang
  

• 1985: Actress Raven-Symone

Events in History on this day
  

• 0304: Death of St. Eulalia
  

• 1348: Third Vicar appointed to Shaftsbury, England, to replace those who died of plague
  

• 1475: Paolo Uccello, Florentine painter, dies
  

• 1513: Machiavelli completes "The Prince"
  

• 1520: Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant, or face excommunication.
  

• 1561: German theologian Caspar Schwenkfeld, a reformer who fell out of favor with the "mainstream" Reformation movement, dies.
  

• 1602: Captain John Smith captured by Indians
  

• 1817: Mississippi is admitted as the 20th state.
  

• 1861: Kentucky is admitted to the Confederate States of America.
  

• 1862: U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill creating the state of West Virginia.
  

• 1869: Governor John Campbell signs the bill that grants women in the Wyoming Territory the right to vote as well as hold public office.
  

• 1896: Intercollegiate basketball was played for the first time as Wesleyan University defeated Yale 4-3 in New Haven, Connecticut.
  

• 1898: Spain signed a treaty officially ending the Spanish-American War. It gave Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States.
  

• 1901: 1st distribution of Nobel Peace Prizes
  

• 1905: The Gift of the Magi is published - author O Henry.
  

• 1906: President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.
  

• 1910: Puccini's opera "Girl of the Golden West," which is about the Gold Rush, premiered in New York. Caruso sang the male lead.
  

• 1917: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the International Red Cross.
  

• 1918: U.S. troops are called to guard Berlin as a coup is feared.
  

• 1927: Famed radio announcer, George Hay introduced the "WSM Barn Dance" this night as, "The Grand Ole Opry."
  

• 1930: Duke Ellington and his Orchestra recorded the haunting, "Mood Indigo" on Victor Records this day. It became one of the Duke's most famous standards.
  

• 1931: Jane Addams became a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman so honored.
  

• 1936: Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. His brother succeeded to the throne as King George VI.
  

• 1941: Japanese troops landed on northern Luzon in the Philippines.
  

• 1948: The UN General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
  

• 1949: 150,000 French troops mass at the border in Vietnam to prevent a Chinese invasion.
  

• 1950: Ralph J. Bunche was presented the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.
  

• 1953: With an investment of $7,600, Hugh Hefner published the first "Playboy" magazine
  

• 1953: Harry Belafonte debuted on Broadway in "Almanac", at the Imperial Theatre. Critics hailed Belafonte's performance as "electrifyingly sincere". Also starring in the show: Hermione Gingold, Billy DeWolfe, Polly Bergen and Orson Bean.
  

• 1958: The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the US as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York to Miami in about two and a-half hours.
  

• 1964: Dr. Martin Luther King Junior received the Nobel Peace Prize during ceremonies in Oslo, Norway.
  

• 1967: Singer Otis Redding died in the crash of his private plane in Wisconsin.
  

• 1977: On UN Human Rights Day, the Soviet Union places 20 prominent dissidents under house arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned silent demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Soviet newspapers decry human rights violations elsewhere in the world.
  

• 1986: Exxon announced the sale of its Manhattan landmark - the 53-story Exxon Building - to a Japanese real estate developer. The price tag was $610 million.
  

• 1987: President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded three days of summit talks in Washington.
  

• 1987: Violinist Jascha Heifetz died in Los Angeles at age 86.
  

• 1988: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited the republic of Armenia, the scene of a devastating earthquake that had killed an estimated 25,000 people.
  

• 1989: Czechoslovakia's president, Gustav Husak, resigned after swearing in a coalition cabinet in which Communists were relegated to a minority role.
  

• 1990: A stand-in for Mikhail Gorbachev accepted the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize. Industrialist 
  

• 1990: Armand Hammer died at age 92. The space shuttle Columbia returned from its 10th mission. 
  

• 1990: The Food and Drug Administration approved Norplant, a long-acting contraceptive implant. 
  

• 1992: President-elect Clinton announced his first Cabinet selections, including Lloyd Bentsen to be treasury secretary and Leon Panetta to be budget director.
  

• 1992: Oregon Senator Bob Packwood apologized for what he called "unwelcome and offensive" actions toward women, but refused to resign.
  

• 1993: South African President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela accepted their Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
  

• 1993: The crew of the space shuttle "Endeavour" deployed the repaired Hubble Space Telescope into Earth orbit.
  

• 1993: The Juilliard Symphony performed under Miguel Harth-Bedoya at New York's Lincoln Center. John Sherer soloed in the Poulenc "Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani," and the closer was Tchaikovsky's "Little Russian" Symphony.
  

• 1994: Advertising executive Thomas Mosser of North Caldwell, New Jersey, was killed by a mail bomb blamed on the Unabomber.
  

• 1994: Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize, pledging to pursue their mission of healing the anguished Middle East.
  

• 1995: The first group of U.S. Marines arrived in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to join NATO soldiers sent to enforce peace in the former Yugoslavia. 
  

• 1996: Roman Catholic Bishop Filipe Ximenes Belo and exiled activist Jose Ramos Horta, opponents of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
  

• 1996: On International Human Rights Day, President Clinton urged the Senate to embrace a 17-year-old treaty barring abuses against women.
  

• 1997: The Supreme Court narrowed double-jeopardy protections for people who face both civil fines and criminal prosecution for the same conduct, ruling that three Oklahoma men could be prosecuted in a bank failure case even though they'd already paid civil fines for their actions.
  

• 1998: The Palestinian leadership scrapped constitutional clauses rejecting Israel's existence.
  

• 1998: Six astronauts jubilantly swung open the doors to the new international space station, becoming the first guests aboard the 250-mile-high outpost.
  

• 1998: Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee lined up one by one in favor of impeaching President Clinton; Democrats vowed opposition after lawyers clashed in closing arguments over alleged "high crimes and misdemeanors."
  

• 1999: After three years under suspicion as a spy for China, computer scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested and charged with removing secrets from secure computers at the Los Alamos weapons lab. (Lee was later freed after pleading guilty to one count of downloading restricted data to tape; 58 other counts were dropped.) 
  

• 1999: More than 2 million people marched in Cuba to demand the return of Elian Gonzalez.
  
  

• 1999:  Death claimed Croatian President Franjo Tudjman at age 77
  

• 1999: Rock singer-musician Rick Danko at age 56, and actress Shirley Hemphill at age 52 , both died on this day. 

Today's History Focus

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