December 5

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

• 1443: Pope Julius II, patron of Michelangelo, Bramante, Raphael
  

• 1839: General George A. Custer
  

• 1782: Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States 1837-1841.
  

• 1839: Gen. George Custer.
  

• 1839: Film director Fritz Lang.
  

• 1894: Phillip K. Wrigley (corporate executive: Wrigley Gum)
  

• 19??: Bruce Carroll Birthday
  

• 19??: Harrie McCollough (Martins)
  

• 1901: Cartoon creator Walt (Elias) Disney.
  

• 1902: South Carolina Senator, Strom Thurmond.
  

• 1906: Otto Preminger (director: Porgy and Bess)
  

• 1922: Composer musician Don Robertson
  

• 1924: Actree Maggie (Margaret) Hayes
  

• 1932: Singer 'Little' Richard (Pennimann) ( Good Golly Miss Molly, Tutti Frutti)
  

• 1932: Auto racer Jim Hurtubise
  

• 1934: Author Joan Didion (Run River)
  

• 1934: Actor singer Larry Kert
  

• 1935: Author Calvin Trillin
  

• 1938: Musician J.J. Cale
  

• 1938: Auto racer J.D. (John Delphus) McDuffie
  

• 1944: Actor Jeroen Krabbe
  

• 1945: Golfer Pam Higgins
  

• 1946: Tenor Jose Carreras
  

• 1947: Pop singer Jim Messina (Your Mama Don't Dance)
  

• 1947: Football quarterback Jim Plunkett
  

• 1949: Hockey player Fred O'Donnell
  

• 1949: PGA champion golfer Lanny Wadkins
  

• 1950: Defensive tackle Steve Furness
  

• 1951: Actress Morgan Brittany
  

• 1963: Actress Carrie Hamilton
  

• 1963: Country singer Ty England
  

• 1965: Rock singer-musician John Rzeznick (The Goo Goo Dolls)
  

• 1967: Country singer Gary Allan
  

• 1968: Comedian-actress Margaret Cho
  

• 1985: Actor Frankie Muniz ("Malcolm in the Middle")
  

• 1988: Actor Ross Bagley
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 0304: Death of St. Crispina
  

• 0532: Death of St. Sabas
  

• 1484: The Pope sets severe penalties against German witches and magicians
  

• 1496 :King Manuel I orders the expulsion of all Jews from Portugal
  

• 1560: Death of Francis II, King of France
  

• 1578: Francis Drake raids Valparaisio, South America
  

• 1758: The German composer Fasch died, while Mozart was still a child. Fasch's music fits in that fuzzy period between the very late Baroque and the earlier days of Haydn.
  

• 1776: The first scholastic fraternity in America, Phi Beta Kappa, was organized at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
  

• 1782: The first native US president, Martin Van Buren, was born in Kinderhook, New York.
  

• 1791: Mozart died at one o'clock in the morning. His friend Sussmayr wrote that shortly before Mozart had leafed through his own Requiem and said, "Didn't I tell you I wrote this for myself?" He was 35. Today's History Focus
  

• 1792: George Washington was re-elected president; John Adams was re-elected vice president.
  

• 1830: ``Symphonie Fantastique'' was premiered on this day in . Hector Berlioz was on stage as timpanist.
  

• 1848: President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in California, leading to the "gold rush" of 1848 and '49.
  

• 1861: In the U.S. Congress, petitions and bills calling for the abolition of slavery are introduced.
  

• 1876: The Stillson wrench was patented by D.C. Stillson of Somerville, MA this day it is a pipe wrench.
  

• 1908: Numerals were used on football uniforms worn by college football players. The University of Pittsburgh (Panthers) proudly displayed their new numbers in a game with Washington and Jefferson.
  

• 1916: David Lloyd George replaces Herbert Asquith as the British Prime Minister.
  

• 1927: Leos Janacek's "Glagolitic Mass" was premiered.
  

• 1932: German physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa, making it possible for him to travel to the United States.
  

• 1933: National Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.
  

• 1936: Bing Crosby took over as host of "The Kraft Music Hall" this day. Jimmy Dorsey (who would later be host, himself) led the Kraft Orchestra.
  

• 1948: The first church service in sign language for the hearing impaired was broadcast from St. Matthew's Lutheran Church for the Deaf in Jamaica, Long Island. WPIX-TV, Channel 11 in New York aired the telecast.
  

• 1951: The first push button-controlled garage opened in Washington, DC this day. A single attendant, without entering a car, could automatically park or return an auto in less than a minute.
  

• 1952: "The Abbott and Costello Show" started a 52-episode, syndicated run on TV this day. Comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello became such big hits that those same 52 episodes were run over and over on local and network TV for years.
  

• 1953: Mutual Radio broadcast "The Green Hornet" for the final time this day. The show left the air after 15 years on Mutual, NBC and ABC. "The Green Hornet" reappeared in 1966; this time on TV.
  

• 1955: The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO under its first president, George Meany.
  

• 1955: A bus boycott begins under the leadership of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama.
  

• 1983: More than a dozen people were killed when a car bomb shattered a nine-story apartment building in mostly Muslim west Beirut, Lebanon.
  

• 1984: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, at age 37, was the oldest player in the National Basketball Association. He decided to play just one more year by signing with the Los Angeles Lakers for $2 million this day. Other NBA greats who played for 16 seasons include John Havlicek of Boston, Dolph Shayes of Philadelphia, Paul Ilas of Seattle and Elvin Hayes of Houston.
  

• 1984: Iran's official news agency quoted the hijackers of a Kuwaiti jetliner parked at Tehran airport as saying they would blow up the plane unless Kuwait released 14 imprisoned extremists.
  

• 1985: On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 1,500 for the first time, then fell back to end the day at 1,482.91.
  

• 1985: Walter Pleate, the nation's oldest military veteran, died at the age of 108. He was one of a dozen living veterans of the Spanish-American War (1898).
  

• 1986: The Soviet Union said it would continue to abide by the SALT II treaty limits on nuclear weapons despite the decision by the United States to exceed them, but warned that Washington was making a big mistake.
  

• 1987: FBI agents searched a federal prison where Cuban inmates had peacefully ended an eleven-day hostage siege the day before. The agents reported finding bottle bombs and thousands of homemade machetes, but no booby-traps or bodies.
  

• 1988: A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted PTL founder Jim Bakker and former aide Richard Dortch on fraud and conspiracy charges. (Bakker was convicted of all counts; Dortch pleaded guilty to four counts and cooperated with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence.)
  

• 1989: East Germany's former leaders, including ousted Communist Party chief Erich Honecker, were placed under house arrest.
  

• 1989: Israeli soldiers killed five heavily armed Arab guerrillas who crossed the border from Egypt, reportedly to launch a terrorist attack commemorating the anniversary of the Palestinian uprising.
  

• 1990: The State Department said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had accepted the idea of direct high-level U.S.-Iraqi talks to resolve the Gulf crisis.
  

• 1990: President Bush, on a visit to Argentina, said he was "not optimistic" that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would withdraw from Kuwait without a fight.
  

• 1991: Richard Speck, who murdered eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966, died a day short of his 50th birthday.
  

• 1991: British media magnate Robert Maxwell disappeared while on his yacht off the Canary Islands.
  

• 1991: Samuel K. Skinner was named White House chief of staff by President Bush, succeeding John H. Sununu.
  

• 1992: Russian President Boris Yeltsin narrowly kept the power to appoint Cabinet ministers, defeating a constitutional amendment that would have put his team of reformers under the control of Russia's Congress.
  

• 1993: A Palestinian boarded a bus and opened fire with an assault rifle in the first major attack in Israel since the signing of a peace pact with the PLO; the gunman killed a reservist before being gunned down.
  

• 1994: Newt Gingrich was elected the first Republican speaker of the House in four decades.
  

• 1994: President Clinton, on a whirlwind visit to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Budapest, Hungary, urged European leaders to "prevent future Bosnias."
  

• 1995: In the first hint of movement at the budget talks, White House officials and Democratic congressional leaders said they were preparing a seven-year budget-balancing plan.
  

• 1995: Former South Korean president Roh Tae-woo, four aides and a dozen top businessmen were indicted in a bribes-for-favors scandal.
  

• 1995: President Clinton announced the foreign policy team for his second term, including Madeleine Albright as the first female secretary of state; William Cohen as defense secretary; and Anthony Lake as CIA director.
  

• 1997: The space shuttle "Columbia" returned from a 16-day mission that had been marred by the bungled release of a satellite.
  

• 1997: The World Trade Organization rejected American claims that the Fuji film company had conspired with the Japanese government to keep Eastman Kodak products out of Japan. 
  

• 1998: James P. Hoffa claimed the Teamsters presidency after challenger Tom Leedham conceded defeat in the union's presidential election.
  

• 1998: Former Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of the vice president, died at his home in Carthage, Tennessee; he was 90. 

• 1999: AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney welcomed the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle and the failure to agree on a new round of negotiations, telling CBS' "Face the Nation," "No deal is better than a bad deal." 
  

• 1999: Cuban President Fidel Castro demanded that the United States return 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez, who was rescued at sea, to his father in Cuba within 72 hours.             
   

Today's History Focus

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