December 4

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

– Proverbs 8:34

December is:

Church Library Month

Born on this Day

• 1383: Pope Felix V
  

• 1585: John Cotton, Puritan clergyman in Massachusetts Bay Colony
  

• 1795: Historian Thomas Carlyle
  

• 1835: English novelist Samuel Butler
  

• 1861: Actress-singer (Helen Louise Leonard) Lillian Russell
  

• 1866: Artist Wassily Kadinsky
  

• 1892: Spanish dictator Francisco Franco
  

• 1912: Aviator Pappy (Gregory) Boyington
  

• 1915: Pianist composer Eddie Heywood, Jr. (Canadian Sunset)
  

• 1921: Actress-singer Deanna Durbin
  

• 1923: Maria Callas was born in New York City according to her mother. However, school records said she was born the day before, and the diva herself said she was born the day before that Maria Callas was a stage name adopted later. She was born Evangelia Kalogeropoulos. (Perhaps this is what accounts for the frequent descrepancies in birthdates)I placed her birthday on December 2nd as well.
  

• 1930: Baseball shortstop Harvey Kuenn (American League Rookie of the Year 1953)
  

• 1931: Hockey player Alex Delvecchio (Most Gentlemanly Player 1966, 1969)
  

• 1932: The president of South Korea, Roh Tae-woo
  

• 1934: Game show host Wink Martindale (some sources 1930)
  

• 1937: Actor-producer Max Baer Junior (The Beverly Hillbillies, Ode to Billy Joe)
  

• 1940: Singer Freddy 'Boom Boom' Cannon (Frederick Anthony Picariello)
  

• 1941: Tennis champ Marty Riessen
  

• 1942: Singer-musician Chris Hillman
  

• 1942: Rock musician Bob Mosley (Moby Grape)
  

• 1944: Drummer singer Dennis Wilson (Group: The Beach Boys )
  

• 1948: Rock singer Southside Johnny Lyon
  

• 1949: Actor Jeff Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Fisher King, The Last Picture Show, The Company She Keeps, American Heart)
  

• 1951: Rock musician Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd; the Rossington Collins Band)
  

• 1951: Actress Patricia Wettig
  

• 1955: Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson
  

• 1959: Rock musician Bob Griffin (The BoDeans)
  

• 1962: Rock singer Vinnie Dombroski (Sponge)
  

• 1964: Actress Marisa Tomei
  

• 1964: Actress Chelsea Noble
  

• 1973: Actress-model Tyra Banks
  

• 1981: Country singer Lila McCann
  

• 1987: Actor Orlando Brown ("Family Matters"; "Safe Harbor")
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 1075: Martyrdom of St. Anno
  

• 1093: Archbishop Anselm, of Canterbury, consecrated
  

• 1099: Death of St. Osmund
  

• 1154: Nicolas Breakspear, the first and only Englishman to be elected Pope, was crowned as Adrian IV.
  

• 1183: The Siege of Castle Kerak is lifted; Saladin withdraws
  

• 1214: Death of William, "the Lion," King of Scotland
  

• 1334: Death of Pope John XXII
  

• 1563: Council of Trent expands the authority of the Pope
  

• 1642: Cardinal de Richelieu, the French statesman, died. He was chief minister to King Louis XIII of France and, from 1629, first minister and actual ruler of France.
  

• 1732: The composer John Gay died. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, where there is an epitaph that Gay is said to have written himself. It reads, "Life is a jest, and all things show it. I thought so once, and now I know it."
  

• 1783: Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York. In a choked voice, the departing chief commander of the Continental Army said, "With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you."
  

• 1791: Britain's Observer newspaper, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world, was first published.
  

• 1812: The power mower was patented on this day by Peter Gaillard of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
  

• 1816: James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States.
  

• 1839: The Whig Party opened a national convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, during which delegates nominated William Henry Harrison for president.
  

• 1861: Queen Victoria of Britain forbids the export of gunpowder, firearms and all materials for their production.
  

• 1867:- The National Grange of Husbandry was founded this day. The organization of farmers was known, typically, as the Grange. The group contributed to agriculture and served as a focus for rural social life in America.
  

• 1872: The 'Mary Celeste' is found adrift. Today's History Focus
  

• 1875: William Marcy Tweed, the "Boss" of New York City's Tammany Hall political organization, escaped from jail and fled the country.
  

• 1881: Eduard Hanslick trashed Tchaikovsky. "There can be music that stinks to the ear," Hanslick wrote, of Tchaikovsky's enchanting Violin Concerto.
  

• 1918: President Wilson set sail for France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.
  

• 1927: Duke Ellington's big band opened the famed Cotton Club in Harlem. It was the first appearance of the Duke's new and larger group. He played the club until 1932.
  

• 1932: "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press!". "The Jergens Journal" aka "The Walter Winchell Show" and later, "Kaiser-Frazer News" was first heard on the NBC-Blue network this night. Winchell kept that gossip show going on the radio for 23 years. It was sponsored at first by Jergens lotion and later, by Dryad deodorant, Kaiser-Frazer cars and Richard Hudnut shampoo.
  

• 1932: "Tobacco Road", a play based on Erskine Caldwell's book, premiered at the Masque Theatre in New York City. The play ran for eight years and 3,182 shows.
  

• 1934: Ethel Merman recorded, "I Get a Kick Out of You", from Cole Porter's musical, "Anything Goe." She was backed by the Johnny Green Orchestra. The tune was recorded for Brunswick Records.
  

• 1942: President Roosevelt ordered liquidation of the Works Progress Administration, created during the Depression to provide work for the unemployed.
  

• 1942: U-S bombers struck the Italian mainland for the first time in World War Two.
  

• 1945: The Senate approved US participation in the United Nations.
  

• 1950: University of Tennessee defies court rulings by rejecting five Negro applicants.
  

• 1955: As part of an NBC-TV special, mime artist Marcel Marceau appeared on television for the first time.
  

• 1962: James Caan made his TV acting debut in "A Fist of Five", an episode of "The Untouchables", starring Robert Stack.
  

• 1965: The United States launched "Gemini Seven" with Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Frank Borman and Navy Commander James A. Lovell aboard.
  

• 1965: Composer, lyricist and singer Jacques Brel made his American debut in concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Brel composed "Jackie", "You're Not Alone", "If You Go Away" and more.
  

• 1971: India joined East Pakistan in its war for independence from West Pakistan. East Pakistan became the republic of Bangladesh.
  

• 1977: Jean-Bedel Bokassa, ruler of the Central African Empire, crowned himself emperor in a ceremony believed to have cost more than $100 million. (Bokassa was deposed in 1979; he died in November 1996 at age 75.)
  

• 1980: The bodies of four American churchwomen slain in El Salvador two days earlier were unearthed. (Five national guardsmen were later convicted of murdering nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, and lay worker Jean Donovan.)
  

• 1981: President Reagan broadens the power of the CIA by allowing spying in the U.S.
  

• 1982: Running back Herschel Walker, of the University of Georgia, received the Heisman Trophy as the nation's finest college football player. Walker was only the seventh junior to receive the award.
  

• 1982: President Reagan returned home from a four-nation Latin American tour, telling reporters the trip had been "real fruitful" and that "we established very good relations there."
  

• 1983: U.S. jet fighters struck Syrian anti-aircraft positions in Lebanon in retaliation for fire directed at American reconnaissance planes. Navy Lt. Robert O. Goodman Jr. was shot down and captured by Syria.
  

• 1984: The discovery of a Bronze Age shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey was announced by the National Geographic Society this day. The find dated back to when King Tutankhamen ruled Egypt.
  

• 1984: A five-day hijack drama began as four men seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran. During the siege, two American passengers were killed by the hijackers.
  

• 1985: National security adviser Robert McFarlane resigned. President Reagan named Vice Adm. John Poindexter to succeed him.
  

• 1985: Dallas, Texas became the largest city in the United States to pass a no smoking law for restaurants.
  

• 1986: Both houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.
  

• 1987: Cuban inmates at a federal prison in Atlanta freed their 89 hostages, peacefully ending an eleven-day uprising under an agreement providing for a moratorium on deportations of Mariel detainees nationwide.
  

• 1988: The government of Argentina announced that hundreds of heavily armed soldiers had ended a four-day military revolt.
  

• 1988: In Venezuela, former President Carlos Andres Perez was declared the winner of the country's presidential election.
  

• 1989: President Bush briefed NATO leaders in Brussels, Belgium, on the just-concluded Malta summit he'd held with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
  

• 1990: Iraq promised to release 3,300 Soviet citizens it was holding. President Bush, was not convinced that sanctions alone would bring Iraqi president Saddam Hussein "to his senses" about invading Kuwait.
  

• 1991: Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest held of the Western hostages in Lebanon, was released after nearly seven years in captivity.
  

• 1991: Florida resident Patricia Bowman testified at William Kennedy Smith's trial in West Palm Beach that Smith had raped her the previous Easter weekend.
  

• 1991: Pan American World Airways ceased operations. (However, a new smaller version of Pan Am returned in September 1996.)
  

• 1992: President Bush ordered American troops to lead a mercy mission to Somalia, threatening military action against warlords and gangs who were blocking food for starving millions.
  

• 1993: Astronauts aboard space shuttle "Endeavour" captured the near-sighted Hubble Space Telescope for repairs.
  

• 1993: Rock musician and composer Frank Zappa died in Los Angeles at age 52.
  

• 1993: The Angolan government and its UNITA guerrilla foes formally adopted terms for a truce to end a conflict that was killing an estimated 1,000 people per day.
  

• 1994: Bosnian Serbs released 53 out of some 400 UN peacekeepers they were holding as insurance against further NATO airstrikes.
  

• 1994: House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich charged in an NBC interview that as many as one quarter of the White House staff had used illegal drugs - a claim denounced the next day as "absolutely false" by Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.
  

• 1995: In a near-freezing drizzle, the first NATO troops landed in the Balkans to begin setting up a peace mission that was expected to bring 20,000 American soldiers into the middle of the Bosnian conflict.
  

• 1996: The Mars Pathfinder lifted off from Cape Canaveral and began speeding toward Mars on a 310 million-mile odyssey to explore the Red Planet's surface.
  

• 1997: The National Basketball Association suspended All-Star Latrell Sprewell of the Golden State Warriors for one year for choking and threatening to kill his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, three days earlier. (An arbitrator later reduced the suspension and reinstated Sprewell to the Warriors, which had terminated his contract.) 
  

• 1998: Space shuttle "Endeavor" and a crew of six blasted off on the first mission to begin assembling the international space station. 
  

• 1999: NASA scientists continued to wait in vain for a signal from the Mars Polar Lander, raising questions about the whereabouts of NASA's $165 million probe. (It's believed the spacecraft was destroyed after it plunged toward the Red Planet.)            
   

Today's History Focus

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