December 3

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

• 1368: Charles IV, King of France
  

• 1596: Violin maker Nicolo Amati
  

• 1729: Talented composer Antonio Soler
  

• 1755: Presidential portrait painter Gilbert Stuart
  

• 1838: U.S. Weather Bureau meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who initiated daily weather bulletins
  

• 1857: English novelist Joseph Conrad
  

• 1883: Anton von Webern was born in Vienna. Webern took instructions from Arnold Schoenberg for four years, culminating in the "Passacaglia," Opus 1, a remarkable piece which builds enormous drama in about 11 minutes.
  

• 1919: Singer Sylvia Syms
  

• 1925: Country singer Ferlin Husky (Gone, Wings of a Dove)
  

• 1927: Singer Andy Williams (Canadian Sunset, Moon River)(some sources 1930)
  

• 1927: Soprano Phyllis Curtin
  

• 1930: French film director Jean-Luc Godard (some sources 1925)
  

• 1931: Singer Jaye P. Morgan (That's All I Want From You, The Longest Walk)
  

• 1936: Baseball catcher Clay Dalrymple
  

• 1937: Racercar driver Bobby Allison (Daytona 500 winner [1978], oldest Daytona 500 winner [1988])
  

• 1941: Actress Mary Alice
  

• 1948: Rock singer Ozzy Osbourne
  

• 1949: Singer Mickey Thomas (Alive Alone)
  

• 1949: Actress Heather Menzies
  

• 1951: Basketball player Mike Bantom
  

• 1951: Basketball player Jim Brewer
  

• 1952: Baseball player Larry Anderson
  

• 1952: Hockey player Bob MacMillan
  

• 1960: Actress Daryl Hannah
  

• 1968: Actor Brendan Fraser ("George of the Jungle")
  

• 1969: Actor Royale Watkins ("Built to Last")
  

• 1975: Actress Lauren Roman ("All My Children")
  

• 1980: Actress Anna Chlumsky ("My Girl")
  

• 1981: Actor Brian Bonsall
  

• 1987: Actor Michael Angarano
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 1154: Death of Pope Anastasius IV
  

• 1469: Death of Piero de'Medici
  

• 1557: Scots Protestants united by a National Covenant
  

• 1564: Ivan IV, "the Terrible," and the Russian Royal family leave Moscow
  

• 1621: Galileo invents the telescope.
  

• 1639: Bronx, New York, purchased from the Indians by Jonas Bronck
  

• 1818: Illinois was admitted as the 21st state.
  

• 1828: Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States. Today's History Focus
  

• 1833: Oberlin College in Ohio opened with an enrollment of 29 men and 15 women, the nation's first truly co-educational college.
  

• 1894: Author Robert Louis Stevenson died in Samoa.
  

• 1922: The first successful Technicolor motion picture, "The Toll of the Sea" was shown at the Rialto Theatre in New York City.
  

• 1924: Prizefighter Jack Sharkey lost his boxing license when the New York State Boxing Commission revoked his boxing card after Sharkey knocked down referee Eddie Purdy during a match.
  

• 1925: The first jazz concerto for piano and orchestra was presented at Carnegie Hall in NYC. Commissioned by Walter Damrosch, American composer, George Gershwin presented "Concerto In F"; and was also the featured soloist playing a flugelhorn in a slow, bluesy style as one of his numbers.
  

• 1929: The Ford Motor Co. raised the pay of its employees from six to seven dollars a day despite the collapse of the American stock market.
  

• 1944: Frank Sinatra recorded "Old Man River" for Columbia Records.
  

• 1947: The Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway, starring Jessica Tandy as Blanche DuBois, Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski and Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski.
  

• 1948: The "Pumpkin Papers" came to light as the House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
  

• 1953: "Kismet" opened on Broadway in New York. The show ran for 583 performances.
  

• 1960: "Camelot" opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York City. Richard Burton and Julie Andrews played the leading roles in the musical written by Lerner and Loewe. Robert Goulet got rave reviews in the show for his songs, "If Ever I Would Leave You", "Then You May Take Me to the Fair" and "How to Handle a Woman", among others. "Camelot" had a run of 873 performances.
  

• 1965: The National Council of Churches asks the U.S. to halt the massive bombings in North Vietnam.
  

• 1967: Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the new heart.
  

• 1967: The "Twentieth Century Limited," the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York to Chicago.
  

• 1968: The rules committee of Major League Baseball announced that in 1969 the pitcher's mound would be lowered from 15 to 10 inches in order to "get more batting action."
  

• 1968: The O'Kaysions received a gold record for the single, "Girl Watche."
  

• 1979: Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum, where the British rock group The Who was performing.
  

• 1983: In his final season as head basketball coach of the DePaul Blue Demons, Ray Meyer won game number 700.
  

• 1984: Miss America 1971, wife of the Governor of Kentucky and an heiress to the Kentucky Fried Chicken fortune, Phyllis George signed a multiyear contract with CBS-TV. Her work as coanchor of the "CBS Morning News" began in January 1985.
  

• 1984: More than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.
  

• 1985: The space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to Earth, completing a week-long mission that included the launching of three satellites and experiments involving space construction techniques.
  

• 1986: Saying, "clearly, mistakes were made," Vice President George Bush defended the administration's secret dealings with Iran, and denied knowing anything about the diversion of funds to Nicaraguan rebels.
  

• 1987: Four days before his summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sign a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles, President Reagan said in an interview with TV network anchormen that there was a reasonably good chance of progress toward a treaty on long-range weapons.
  

• 1988: In South Africa, eleven black funeral mourners were slain in Natal Province in an attack blamed on security forces.
  

• 1988: Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State University won the Heisman Trophy.
  

• 1989: President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev held the second day of their summit talks off Malta aboard the Soviet cruise liner Maxim Gorky; the two leaders then held a joint news conference.
  

• 1989: East German Communist leader Egon Krenz, the ruling Politburo and the party's Central Committee, resigned.
  

• 1990: A Northwest Airlines DC-9 collided on the ground with a Northwest Boeing 727 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, resulting in a fire that claimed eight lives.
  

• 1990: President Bush began a five-nation South American tour as he arrived in Brazil.
  

• 1991: Radicals in Lebanon released American hostage Alann Steen, who'd been held captive nearly five years.
  

• 1991: Embattled White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu resigned; he was succeeded by Samuel K. Skinner.
  

• 1992: The UN Security Council unanimously approved a US-led military mission to help starving Somalia.
  

• 1992: The Greek tanker "Aegean Sea" spilled 21 and a-half million gallons of crude oil when it ran aground at La Coruna, Spain.
  

• 1993: Lewis Thomas, the great science writer, died. Thomas was also a great music fan. One of his books was called "Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony." But his favorite composer was Bach.
  

• 1993: Britain's Princess Diana, saying she was fed up with the media's intrusions into her life, announced she would be limiting her public appearances.
  

• 1993: Angola's government and its rebel foes agreed to a cease-fire in their 18-year war.
  

• 1994: Rebel Serbs in Bosnia failed to keep a pledge to release hundreds of UN peacekeepers, some of whom had been held for more than a week.
  

• 1994: AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser, who along with her two children were infected with HIV because of a blood transfusion, died in Santa Monica, California, at age 47.
  

• 1995: President Clinton, wrapping up a five-day European trip, authorized a vanguard of 700 American troops to open a risky mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  

• 1995: former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan was arrested for his role in a 1979 coup that was followed by the most violent crackdown in the nation's history.
  

• 1996: Four people were killed in a subway bombing in southern Paris.
  

• 1996: The Justice Department barred 16 Japanese army veterans suspected of World War Two atrocities from entering the United States.
  

• 1996: A judge in Hawaii ruled that the state had to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, prompting an appeal.
  

• 1997: President Clinton hosted his first town hall meeting on America's race relations in Akron, Ohio.
  

• 1997: South Korea struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a record $55 billion bailout of its foundering economy.
  

• 1998: Republicans jettisoned campaign fund-raising from their impeachment inquiry, clearing the way for a historic House Judiciary Committee vote over President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his effort to cover it up.

•  1999: Six firefighters died while battling a fire in an abandoned Worcester, Mass., industrial building. 
  

• 1999: Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the Red Planet; the spacecraft is presumed destroyed. 
  

• 1999: Tori Murden of the United States became the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean alone as she arrived at the French Carribean island of Guadeloupe, 81 days after leaving the Canary Islands near the coast of Africa. 
  

• 1999: Billionaire banker Edmond Safra suffocated in a smoke-filled bathroom in his Monaco apartment;  American nurse Ted Maher confessed to setting the fire that killed the 67-year-old Safra. 
  

• 1999: Oscar-nominated actress Madeline Kahn died at age 57.           
   

Today's History Focus

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