December 1

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

• 1083: Princess Anna Commena of Byzantium
  

• 1741: Samuel Kirkland Congregational minister to the Indians of the Six Nations (the Iroquois League) and negotiator of the Oneida Alliance with the colonists during the U.S. War of Independence
  

• 1743: Martin Heinrich Klaproth German chemist who discovered uranium (1789), zirconium (1789), and cerium (1803).
  

• 1886: Detective novelist Rex Stout (mystery writer: Nero Wolfe)
  

• 1898: Actor Cyril Ritchard
  

• 1899: Robert Welch founder of John Birch Society.
  

• 1904: Former United Mine Workers president W.A. "Tony" Boyle
  

• 1911: Baseball manager Walter Alston (LA Dodgers)
  

• 1911: Baseball owner Calvin Griffith (Senators, Twins)
  

• 1912: Baseball player Cookie (Harry) Lavagetto
  

• 1913: Actress Mary Martin (South Pacific, Peter Pan)
  

• 1923: Former CIA director Stansfield Turner
  

• 1926: Actor Robert Symond
  

• 1929: Actor Dick (Schulefand) Shawn (Bewitched)
  

• 1934: Singer Billy Paul (Me and Mrs. Jones)
  

• 1935: Comedian-film maker (Allen Konigsberg) Woody Allen
  

• 1935: Soul singer Lou Rawls (You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine)
  

• 1939: PGA golfer Lee Trevino (US Open 1968,71).
  

• 1939: Singer Dianne Lennon (The Lennon Sisters)
  

• 1940: Comedian-actor Richard Pryor (Stir Crazy, Blue Collar, The Richard Pryor Show)
  

• 1942: Country musician Casey Van Beek (The Tractors)
  

• 1943: Rock musician John Densmore (The Doors) some sources 1945
  

• 1945: Actress-singer Bette Midler (The Rose, From a Distance, Beaches)
  

• 1946: Singer Gilbert O'Sullivan (Alone Again Naturally).
  

• 1948: Baseball player George Foster
  

• 1951: Actor Treat Williams
  

• 1956: Country singer Kim Richey.
  

• 1959: Actress Charlene Tilton (Dallas)
  

• 1960: Actress-model Carol Alt
  

• 1972: Actor Ron Melendez
  

• 1975: Gospel singer Sarah Masen
  

• 1988: Actress Ashley Monique Clark ("The Hughleys") 

Events in History on this day
  

• 0659: Death of St. Eloi
  

• 1135: Death of Henry I, King of England Today's History Focus
  

• 1170: Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, returns to England from exile
  

• 1372: Geoffrey Chaucer left England for Rome on a Royal mission
  

• 1590: Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" is registered for publication
  

• 1640: Portugal regains independence after 60 years of Spanish rule
  

• 1615: The first Bach or at least, the first musical Bach we know died. Hans Bach is considered the patriarch of a family that produced so many musicians over so many generations (The Bach came much later) that in those days the family name was actually used as a synonym for musician.
  

• 1742 Empress Elisabeth orders expulsion of all Jews from Russia.
  

• 1824: The presidential election was turned over to the US House of Representatives when a deadlock developed between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. (Adams ended up the winner.)
  

• 1861: The U.S. gunboat Penguin seizes the Confederate blockade runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000.
  

• 1862: President Lincoln gives the State of the Union message to the 37th Congress.
  

• 1878: The first telephone is installed in the White House.
  

• 1879: Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, "H.M.S. Pinafore" opened this day. Arthur Sullivan conducted the orchestra while William Gilbert played the role of a sailor in the chorus and in the Queen's Nay-vee.
  

• 1881: Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz.
  

• 1887: Sherlock Holmes 1st appears in print: "A Study In Scarlet."
  

• 1909: The Pennsylvania Trust Company, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania became the first bank in the nation to offer a Christmas Club account. It encouraged customers to set aside money for holiday.
  

• 1913: The first drive-in automobile service station opened, in Pittsburgh.
  

• 1913: Continuous moving assembly line introduced by Ford (a new car every 2:38)
  

• 1917: Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town near Omaha, Nebraska.
  

• 1924: The play, "Lady Be Good" opened in New York City. George Gershwin wrote the music while Fred and Adele Astaire were well-received by the show's audience for their dancing talents.
  

• 1929: BINGO invented by Edwin S Lowe.
  

• 1934: Josef Stalin aide, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated in Leningrad.
  

• 1942: Nationwide gasoline rationing went into effect in the United States.
  

• 1943: Ending a "Big Three" meeting in Tehran, President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Russian Premier Josef Stalin pledged a concerted effort to defeat Nazi Germany.
  

• 1945: Burl Ives made his concert debut this night. He appeared at New York's Town Hall.
  

• 1950:British composer, EJ Moeran, died. He drowned at the age of 50.
  

• 1953: Walter Alston was named manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers on this, his 42nd birthday. He became the dean of baseball managers before retiring in 1976.
  

• 1955: Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, defied the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white man aboard a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. Mrs. Parks was arrested, sparking a year-long boycott of the buses by blacks.
  

• 1958: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Flower Drum Song" opened on Broadway.
  

• 1959: Representatives of 12 countries, including the United States, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity.
  

• 1965: An airlift of refugees from Cuba to the United States began in which thousands of Cubans were allowed to leave their homeland.
  

• 1968: "Promises, Promises" opened on Broadway. The play ran for 1,281 performances; earning $35,000 in profits each week of 1969. Dionne Warwick had a hit version of the title song.
  

• 1969: The US government held its first draft lottery since World War Two.
  

• 1971: John Lennon's ``Happy Christmas'' was released.
  

• 1973: David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, died in Tel Aviv at age 87.
  

• 1973: 'The Golden Bear', Jack Nicklaus, won the Walt Disney World Open Golf Tournament and became the first golfer to win $2 million in career earnings.
  

• 1975: On her 30th birthday, Bette Midler had an emergency appendectomy.
  

• 1980: George Rogers, of the University of South Carolina, was named the Heisman Trophy winner. He went on to achieve great success for the Washington Redskins.
  

• 1981: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar surpassed Oscar Robertson as pro basketball's second all-time leading scorer (second only to Wilt Chamberlain). Kareem got to the total of 26,712 points as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Utah Jazz 117-86. Chamberlain's record fell in 1984, when Kareem's scores reached 31,259. Kareem wound up his career in 1989 with 38,387 points.
  

• 1986: President Ronald Reagan said he would welcome the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Iran-Contra affair, if such a move were recommended by the Justice Department.
  

• 1986: Lt. Col. Oliver North pleads the fifth amendment before a Senate panel investigating the Iran Contra arms sale.
  

• 1986: On this day, the world's most expensive hotel suite (to that date) was offered to visitors at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. The eight-room accommodations included four fireplaces, three bedrooms and a library with secret passage. All this, and much more, for a mere $20,000 a night.
  

• 1987: NASA announced that four companies -- Boeing Aerospace, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics, General Electric's Astro-Space Division and Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International -- had been awarded contracts to help build a space station.
  

• 1988: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev won nearly unanimous approval for a more dynamic political structure from the Supreme Soviet, which voted itself out of existence in favor of a new Congress of People's Deputies.
  

• 1988: Carlos Salinas de Gortari was sworn in as president of Mexico.
  

• 1989: A historic meeting took place between Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev and Pope John Paul the Second. They met at the Vatican and announced agreement to establish diplomatic ties. Gorbachev renounced more than 70 years of oppression of religion in the Soviet Union.
  

• 1989: Dissident elements in the Philippine military launched an unsuccessful coup against Corazon Aquino's government.
  

• 1989: East Germany's Parliament abolished the Communist Party's constitutional guarantee of supremacy.
  

• 1990: British and French workers digging the Channel Tunnel between their countries finally met after knocking out a passage in a service tunnel.
  

• 1990: Iraq accepted a U.S. offer to talk about resolving the Persian Gulf crisis.
  

• 1991: Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Soviet Union.
  

• 1991: Kidnappers in Lebanon pledged to release American hostage Joseph Cicippio within 48 hours.
  

• 1991: The space shuttle Atlantis safely returned from a shortened military mission.
  

• 1992: President Boris Yeltsin survived an impeachment attempt by hard-liners at the opening of the Russian Congress.
  

• 1992: Mineola, New York, Amy Fisher was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison for shooting and seriously wounding Mary Jo Buttafuoco.
  

• 1992: The Senate Ethics Committee started an investigation into allegations that Oregon Senator Bob Packwood sexually harassed women who worked for him. He denied it, but a large number of women came forward with similar stories, and ultimately he resigned from the Senate.
  

• 1993: Eighteen people were killed when a Northwest Airlink commuter plane crashed in Minnesota.
  

• 1993: Crystal Records issued a new recording of Barber's "Summer Music" for winds, performed by the Westwood Wind Quartet. Barber's "Summer Music" is one of the composer's most inventive pieces but isn't very well known to classical fans.
  

• 1994: Former TV evangelist Jim Bakker spent his first full day of freedom after time in prison, a halfway house and house arrest for bilking followers of his PTL ministry.
  

• 1994: Rapper Tupac Shakur was convicted in the November of 1993 sexual assault of a woman at his New York City hotel suite.
  

• 1994: The Senate gave final congressional approval to a world trade agreement, passing the 124-nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 76-24.
  

• 1995: The NATO alliance chose Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana to be its new secretary general.
  

• 1995: Tens of thousands of people in Dublin, Ireland, warmly welcomed President Clinton to his ancestral homeland.
  

• 1996: The Arab League held an emergency meeting in Cairo, after which it warned Israel that peace efforts would be endangered if Israel insisted on expanding Jewish settlements.
  

• 1997: A 14-year-old youth opened fire on a prayer circle at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, killing three fellow students and wounding five; Michael Carneal later pleaded guilty but mentally ill, and is to be sentenced December 1998.
  

• 1997: An international conference on reducing greenhouse gases opened in Kyoto, Japan.
  

• 1998: Exxon agreed to buy Mobil for $73.7 billion. Cuba's Communist Party recommended that December 25th be re-established as a permanent holiday.  
  

• 1999: President Clinton addressed a World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, where he defended his administration's policies in the face of sometimes violent street demonstrations.
  

• 1999:  An international team of scientists announced it had mapped virtually an entire human chromosome.
  

• 1999:  On World AIDS Days, United Nations officials released a report estimating that 11 million children worldwide had been orphaned by the pandemic.         
   

Today's History Focus

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