December 19

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

– Proverbs 8:34

December is:

Made in America Month

Born on this Day

• 1036: Su Tung-p'o, Chinese poet, essayist, painter, official.
  

• 1498: Theologian Andreas Osiander His original name ANDREAS HOSEMANN German theologian who helped introduce the protestant Reformation to Nürnberg.
  

• 1683: Philip V, 1st Bourbon King of Spain
  

• 1790: Sir William Parry, England, Arctic explorer
  

• 1814: Edwin M(cMasters) Stanton Secretary of war who, under President Abraham Lincoln, tirelessly presided over the giant Union military establishment during most of the American Civil War (1861-65).
  

• 1820: Women's suffrage leader Mary Livermore
  

• 1832: Sir John Kirk Scottish physician, companion to explorer David Livingstone, and British administrator in Zanzibar.
  

• 1849: Henry Clay Frick, industrialist; worked for Carnegie.
  

• 1865: Actress Minnie Fiske. She first appeared on stage at the age of three.
  

• 1868: Novelist Eleanor Porter ("Pollyanna")
  

• 1902: Actor Ralph Richardson SIR RALPH DAVID RICHARDSON British stage and motion-picture actor who, with Sir John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, was one of the greatest British actors of his generation.
  

• 1906: Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet statesman
  

• 1910: French dramatist Jean Genet, a pioneer in the theater of the absurd
  

• 1912: Thomas (Tip) Philip O'Neill, Jr., longest serving Speaker of U.S. House
  

• 1920: Country singer Little Jimmy Dickens.
  

• 1925: Country Music Hall of Famer ‘Little’ Jimmy Dickens (Country Boy, My Heart’s bouquet, May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose)
  

• 1929: (Pulitzer Prize-winning: The Great White Hope 1969; Fear and Desire, Jaws 2)
  

• 1930: Actor James Booth
  

• 1934: Actress Cicely Tyson (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Roots, Fried Green Tomatoes, Heat Wave, Sounder)
  

• 1941: Rhythm-and-blues singer-musician Maurice White (Earth, Wind and Fire)
  

• 1944: Musician singer Zal Yanovsky (Group: The Lovin’ Spoonful: Do You Believe in Magic, You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice, Daydream, Did You ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?, Summer in the City, Rain on the Roof, Nashville Cats)
  

• 1944: Actor Tim Reid
  

• 1944: Paleonthologist Richard E. Leakey
  

• 1944: Rock singer Alvin Lee (Ten Years After)
  

• 1945: Actress Elaine Joyce
  

• 1945: Musician John McEuen (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
  

• 1946: Actor Robert Urich (Final Descent, Boatworks, The Lazarus Man, Danielle Steel’s A Perfect Stranger, Vegas, Spenser: for Hire, Magnum Force)
  

• 1947: Singer Janie Fricke
  

• 1949: U.S. Olympic Gold swimmer Claudia Kolb
  

• 1952: Musician Jeff Davis
  

• 1952: Country music singer Janie Fricke
  

• 1957: Basketball player Kevin McHale
  

• 1960: Actor Mike Lookinland ("The Brady Bunch")
  

• 1963: Actress Jennifer Beals (Four Rooms, Devil in a Blue Dress, Day of Atonement, Indecency, Vampire’s Kiss, The Bride, Cinderella, Flashdance, 2000 Malibu Road)
  

• 1966: Actor Robert McNaughton (I am the Cheese, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial)
  

• 1968: Rock musician Kevin Shepard (Tonic)
  

• 1972: Actress Alyssa Milano (Fear, Deadly Sins, Conflict of Interest, Commando, Old Enough, Who’s the Boss?)
  

• 1980: Actor Jake Gyllenhall
  

• 1980: Actress Marla Sokoloff

Events in History on this day
  

• 0960: Reconstruction of Kyoto, Japan, begun after a fire
  

• 1075: Death of Edith, wife of Edward "the Confessor," King of England
  

• 1154: Death of Stephen, King of England
  

• 1155: Coronation of Henry II and Elanor of Aquitane as King and Queen of England
  

• 1370: Death of Pope Urban V
  

• 1406: Coronation of Pope Gregory XII
  

• 1644: Observance of Christmas forbidden in England
  

• 1650: Edinburgh Castle surrenders to Oliver Cromwell
  

• 1732: Benjamin Franklin began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanac."
  

• 1776: Thomas Paine published his first "American Crisis" essay, in which he wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls."
  

• 1777: General George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to camp for the winter.
  

• 1843: Charles Dickens' classic Yuletide tale, "A Christmas Carol," was first published in England.
  

• 1871: Corrugated paper was patented by Albert L. Jones of New York City. The rippled cardboard material is still used today in boxes and as packing protection.
  

• 1890: Tchaikovsky had a successful premiere in St. Petersburg with his opera "The Queen of Spades."
  

• 1900: Parliament votes amnesty for all involved in army treason trial known as the Dreyfus Affair.
  

• 1907: 239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.
  

• 1909: U.S. socialist women denounce suffrage as a movement of the middle class.
  

• 1917: The first games of the new National Hockey League were played . Five teams made up the league: Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec, the Montreal Canadiens and the Montreal Wanderers.
  

• 1918: Robert Ripley began his "Believe It or Not" column in "The New York
  Globe."
  

• 1926: A new law states that women authors must copyright under their husband’s name.
  

• 1930: Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms" was played by the Boston Symphony.
  

• 1932: The British Broadcasting Corporation began transmitting overseas with its "Empire Service" to Australia.
  

• 1937: Maurice Ravel underwent brain surgery. Ravel had been in a traffic accident, and since that time had begun to lose his memory and his ability to concentrate. The operation was a failure. Ravel would not survive long after it.
  

• 1941: Hitler assumes the title of Commander in Chief of the German Army, after accepting the resignation of Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, whom Hitler calls a ‘vain, cowardly wretch’.
  

• 1945: Congress confirms Eleanor Roosevelt as the U.S. delegate to the UN.
  

• 1950: The North Atlantic Council names General Eisenhower supreme commander of Western European defense forces.
  

• 1957: The musical play "The Music Man," starring Robert Preston, with book and songs by Meredith Willson, opened on Broadway.
  

• 1959: Reputed to be the last civil war veteran, Walter Williams, dies at 117 in Houston.
  

• 1960: Neil Sedaka’s "Calendar Girl" was released on RCA Victor Records. It became Sedaka’s fourth record to make the charts.
  

• 1960: Frank Sinatra recorded his first session with his very own record company, Reprise Records. Frank did "Ring-A-Ding-Ding" and "Let’s Fall in Love."
  

• 1961: The movie "Judgment At Nuremberg" opened in New York City with a star-studded cast including Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, and Maximillian Schell.
  

• 1972: "Apollo 17" splashed down in the Pacific, winding up the Apollo program of manned lunar landings.
  

• 1973: Johnny Carson pulled a good one before a nationwide late-night audience on NBC. He started a fake toilet-paper scare. In his "Tonight Show" monologue, he told his huge audience that a Wisconsin congressman had warned that toilet paper was disappearing from supermarket shelves. Due to his gag -- it did in many areas of the United States.
  

• 1974: Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States after a House vote.
  

• 1982: Four bombs explode at South Africa’s only nuclear power station in Johannesburg.
  

• 1984: Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July first, 1997.
  

• 1984: The United States formally withdrew from UNESCO in an effort to force reform of the U.N. cultural organization's budget and alleged Third World bias.
  

• 1985: ABC Sports announced that it was severing ties with Howard Cosell and released ‘The Mouth’ from all TV commitments. Howard continued on ABC Radio for another five years.
  

• 1986: The Soviet Union announced it had freed dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile, and pardoned his wife, Yelena Bonner.
  

• 1987: The Palestinian uprising in Israel's occupied territories spread to Arab east Jerusalem.
  

• 1988: President-elect Bush nominated New York Congressman Jack Kemp to be his secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
  

• 1988: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to a Likud-Labor coalition to govern the Jewish state.
  

• 1989: Police in Jacksonville, Florida, disarmed a parcel bomb at the local NAACP office, the fourth in a series of mail bombs to turn up in the Deep South. (Two of the bombs killed a Savannah, Georgia, alderman and a federal judge in Alabama -- Walter L. Moody Junior was convicted in both bombings.)
  

• 1990: Iraq urged its people to stockpile oil to avoid shortages should war break out, and Saddam Hussein declared he was "ready to crush any attack." 
  

• 1992: More than 400 suspected Muslim fundamentalists deported by Israel were confined to a makeshift refugee camp in a "no man's land" in Lebanon because of the Lebanese government's refusal to accept them.
  

• 1993: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and senior PLO officials ended two days of closed-door talks in Oslo, Norway, in which they sought to break a deadlock over Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories.
  

• 1994: CNN publicly acknowledged it had wrongfully disobeyed a judge's order in broadcasting former Panamanian military ruler Manuel Noriega's jailhouse telephone conversations.
  

• 1994: Former President Jimmy Carter, on a peace mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina, met with Bosnian Serb leaders, who offered a four-month cease-fire.
  

• 1995: The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate, turning fears to cheers on Wall Street a day after the biggest one-day stock plunge in four years. 
  

• 1995: Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, went on trial. 
  

• 1995: A gunman opened fire inside a Bronx, N.Y., shoe store, killing five people. 
  

• 1996: The television industry unveiled a plan to rate programs using tags such as "TV-G," "TV-Y" and "TV-M."
  

• 1996: The school board of Oakland, California, voted to recognize Black English, also known as "Ebonics," in a decision that set off a firestorm of controversy (the board later modified its stance).
  

• 1996: Actor Marcello Mastroianni died in Paris at age 72.
  

• 1997: A SilkAir Boeing 737-300 plunged from the sky, crashing into an Indonesian river and killing all 104 people aboard.
  

• 1997: In Milwaukee, postal clerk Anthony Deculit killed a co-worker he'd feuded with, wounded a supervisor and injured another worker before taking his own life.
  

• 1997: James Cameron's epic "Titanic," the highest grossing film ever made, opened in American movie theaters. 
  

• 1998: President Clinton halted airstrikes against Iraq after a fourth day of attacks.
  

• 1998: Two days after his confession of marital infidelity, Bob Livingston told the House he wouldn't serve as its next speaker.

• 1999: Space shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts roared into the night toward the crippled Hubble Space Telescope. 
  

• 1999: Macau spent its last day under Portuguese control before being handed back to China, ending 442 years of colonial rule. 
  

• 1999: Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Orlando Brown was ejected for pushing referee Jeff Triplette to the ground during a game against Jacksonville after accidentally being hit in the eye with Triplette's weighted penalty flag. 
  

• 1999: Actor Desmond Llewelyn, who'd starred as the eccentric gadget expert Q in a string of James Bond films, was killed in a car crash in East Sussex, England; he was 85.     

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