December 21

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

• 1639: Dramatist Jean Baptiste Racine (Alexandre, Andromaque, Les Plaideurs, Britannicus, Berenice, Bajazet, Mithridate)
  

• 1804: British statesman Benjamin Disraeli
  

• 1860: Humanitarian Henrietta Szold (founding president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America)
  

• 1879: Russian dictator Joseph (Dzhugashvili) Stalin
  

• 1892: Golf champion Walter Hagen
  

• 1908: President of NBC-TV Pat Weaver (Credited with the idea for Today and Tonight shows)
  

• 1911: Professional baseball player Josh Gibson
  

• 1917: Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Boll (Group Portrait with Lady, The Clown, Billiards at Half-Past Nine)
  

• 1918: Former Austrian president and former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim
  

• 1922: Ventriloquist Paul Winchell (Jerry Mahoney Show)
  

• 1926: Country singer Freddie Hart
  

• 1928: Actor Ed Nelson (Anatomy of a Seduction, Deadly Weapon)
  

• 1933: Country singer Freddie Hart (Easy Loving)
  

• 1935: Talk show host Phil Donahue
  

• 1937: Actress Jane Fonda (Vietnam-era peace activist)
  

• 1940: Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore. Zappa found fame as a satirical rock star, but ventured into jazz when he played with Jean-Luc Ponty, and composed a number of classical works as well.
  

• 1942: Singer Carla Thomas
  

• 1943: Musician Albert Lee
  

• 1944: Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas
  

• 1946: Pop singer-musician Carl Wilson (The Beach Boys)
  

• 1946: Actor Josh Mostel (City Slickers series, The Chase, Little Man Tate, Wall Street, Radio Days, The Money Pit, Sophie’s Choice, Harry and Tonto, Jesus Christ, Superstar, The King of Marvin Gardens, Murphy’s Law, Delta House, At Ease)
  

• 1946: Musician Carl Wilson (Guitar for the Beach Boys)
  

• 1947: Baseball player Elliott Maddox
  

• 1952: Rock musician Gabrielle Glaser (Luscious Jackson)
  

• 1952: Country singer Christy Forester (The Forester Sisters)
  

• 1953: Singer Betty Wright
  

• 1954: Tennis star Chris Evert 1956: Entertainer Jim Rose
  

• 1955: Actor-comedian Andy Dick ("NewsRadio")
  

• 1956: Country singer Lee Roy Parnell
  

• 1957: Actor-comedian Ray Romano ("Everybody Loves Raymond")
  

• 1959: Olympic track star Florence Griffith-Joyner (Olympic gold medalist: 100 and 200-meter run 1988)
  

• 1960: Baseball center fielder Andy Van Slyke
  

• 1966: Actor Kiefer Sutherland
  

• 1968: Actress Khrystyne Haje ("Head of the Class")
  

• 1968: Actress Khrystyne Haje
  

• 1968: Country singer Brad Warren (The Warren Brothers)
  

• 1969: Actress Julie Delpy
  

• 1971: Singer-musician Brett Scallions (Fuel)

Events in History on this day
  

• 1124: Pope Honorius I confirmed in office
  

• 1200: Death of Gilbert Erail, 12th Master of the Templars
  

• 1237: Mongols take the city of Riazan, Russia
  

• 1491: A Truce of 5 years began between England and Scotland
  

• 1494: A new sickness breaks out in Naples: Syphillis
  

• 1549: Death of Margaret of Navarre
  

• 1620: Pilgrims aboard the "Mayflower" went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. (following a 63-day voyage)
  

• 1849: The first ice-skating club in America was formed. It was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  

• 1862: U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor to be awarded to Navy personnel that have distinguished themselves by their gallantry in action.
  

• 1866: Indians led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse kill Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 other men who had ventured out from Fort Phil Kearny to cut wood.
  

• 1898: Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium.
  

• 1903: Holland’s Senate passes a workman’s compensation act to protect accident victims.
  

• 1909: McKinley and Washington schools of Berkeley, California, became the first authorized, junior-high schools in the U.S. (grades 7,8 and 9). The schools were actually identified as introductory high schools
  

• 1913: The first crossword puzzle was published, in the New York "World." (with 32 clues)
  

• 1914: Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Mack Swain appeared in the first six-reel, feature-length comedy. The film was directed by Mack Sennett and was lovingly titled, "Tillie’s Punctured Romance."
  

• 1928: President Coolidge signs the Boulder Dam bill.
  

• 1937: Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" opened in Los Angeles, the first full-length animated feature film.
  

• 1944: Horse racing was banned in the United States until after World War II.
  

• 1945: General George S. Patton died in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident.
  

• 1946: An earthquake and tidal wave kill hundreds in Japan.
  

• 1948: The state of Eire (formerly the Irish Free State) declared its independence.
  

• 1963: The Turk minority riots in Cyprus to protest anti-Turkish revisions in the constitution.
  

• 1964: Britain’s House of Commons votes to ban the death penalty.
  

• 1965: Four pacifists are indicted in New York for burning draft cards.
  

• 1966: The Beach Boys received a gold record for the single, "Good Vibrations."
  

• 1967: The Rolling Stones LP, "Their Satanic Majesties Request", was released. It cost $50,000 to produce and came complete with a 3-D photograph of the Stones on the cover.
  

• 1968: "Apollo Eight" was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.
  

• 1969: U.S. draft evaders gather for a holiday dinner in Montreal, Canada.
  

• 1971: The UN Security Council chose Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as Secretary-General.
  

• 1976: The Liberian-registered tanker "Argo Merchant" ran aground near Nantucket Island, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the North Atlantic.
  

• 1983: The NCAA men’s basketball rules-committee rescinded the controversial, last-two-minute, free-throw rule. It had been enforced at the beginning of the 1983 season to eliminate excessive fouling at the end of a game.
  

• 1985: Bruce Springsteen’s album, "Born in the USA", passed Michael Jackson’s "Thriller" to become the second longest-lasting LP in the top 10. It stayed there for 79 weeks. Only "The Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews lasted longer: 109 weeks.
  

• 1986: 500,000 Chinese students gather in Shanghai’s People’s Square calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of the press.
  

• 1987: In New York, three white teen-agers from the Howard Beach section of Queens were convicted of manslaughter in the death of a black man who was chased onto a highway, where he was struck by a car. A fourth defendant was acquitted.
  

• 1988: 270 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
  

• 1989: Panama's U.S.-installed President Endara ordered a national curfew.
  

• 1989: Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu delivered what turned out to be his final public speech. The hard-line Communist ruler was visibly stunned as his listeners began booing. (Ceausescu fled from power and was executed four days later.)
  

• 1990: In Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis participated in an evacuation drill to test war readiness. 
  

• 1990: British Prime Minister John Major met with President Bush at Camp David, Maryland; afterward, the two leaders expressed their unity on the Persian Gulf crisis. 
  

• 1991: Eleven of the 12 former Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
  

• 1992: President-elect Clinton tapped Richard Riley to be education secretary and Hazel O'Leary to be energy secretary; Clinton expressed anger at "bean counters" for saying he was not appointing enough women to his Cabinet.
  

• 1992: Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic won re-election.
  

• 1993: First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an interview with The Associated Press, said her husband, President Clinton, had solicited her advice on major issues; but, she added, her powers were limited.
  

• 1994: A firebomb exploded on a crowded New York City subway train, injuring 48 people. (Unemployed computer programmer Edward Leary was later convicted of attempted murder.)
  

• 1995: The city of Bethlehem passed from Israeli to Palestinian control.
  

• 1995: The House approved sweeping welfare reform that President Clinton said he would veto. (He later signed a revamped version.) 
  

• 1995: A train collision outside Cairo, Egypt, claimed 75 lives. 
  

• 1996: After two years of denials, House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted violating House ethics rules.
  

• 1996: AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho was named "Time" magazine's "Man of the Year."
  

• 1997: President Clinton, accompanied by his wife and daughter, left for Bosnia to spread holiday cheer -- and to carry the news that he wanted US troops to remain there indefinitely as the region recovered from its devastating war. 
  

• 1998: Israel's parliament voted overwhelmingly for early elections, signaling the demise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ailing hard-line government.
  

• 1998: A Chinese court sentenced two dissidents (Xu Wenli, Wang Youcai) to long prison terms for trying to organize an opposition party.
  

• 1999: Amid heightened concerns about the possibility of a holiday terrorist attack, security was ordered tightened at American airports and the Pentagon said it was taking "appropriate action" to protect U.S. forces overseas.       

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