December 17

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

– Proverbs 8:34

December is:

International Calendar Awareness Month - Most calendars are purchased in the month of December. January and November are also big selling months for calendars. Sponsor: Calendar Marketing Association.

Born on this Day

• 1619: Prince Rupert RUPERT OF THE RHINE, or RUPERT OF THE PALATINATE. He was the most talented Royalist commander of the English Civil War (1642-51).
  

• 1632: Anthony Ö Wood, antiquarian, writer
  

• 1749: Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet French mathematician and physicist who was the mistress of Voltaire.
  

• 1760: American Revolutionary War soldier Deborah Sampson, who fought as a man under the alias Robert Shurtleff
  

• 1778: Sir Humphry Davy, discovered several chemical elements
  

• 1797: Joseph Henry. One of the first great American scientists after Benjamin Franklin. He aided Samuel F.B. Morse in the development of the telegraph and discovered several important principles of electricity, including self-induction, a phenomenon of primary importance in electronic.
  

• 1807: Poet John Greenleaf Whittier (Barbara Frietchie, Maud Miller, Snowbound; Quaker: devoted to the abolitionist cause in U.S.)
  

• 1896: Conductor Arthur Fiedler He was maestro of the Boston Pops Orchestra for 50 seasons and the best-selling classical conductor of all time; his recordings with the Pops sold some 50,000,000 discs.
  

• 19??: Kurt Kaiser
  

• 1903: Erskine Caldwell, U.S. novelist (Tobacco Road, God’s Little Acre)
  

• 1904: Paul Cadmus, painter and etcher
  

• 1908: Nobel prize-winning atomic scientist Willard Libby He discovered of Carbon-14, the method, although unreliable at times, for dating ancient plant, animal and mineral remains.
  

• 1910: Trumpeter and composer Sy (Melvin) Oliver ( Easy Does It, Swing High, Well, Git It, Opus No. 1)
  

• 1915: Actress Joan Woodbury (The Time Travelers, Northwest Trail, Song of the Gringo, Bulldog Courage)
  

• 1917: Comedian Gene Rayburn (The Steve Allen Show, Tonight; TV game-show host: Match Game, Make the Connection, Break the Bank; TV panelist: The Name’s the Same)
  

• 1929: Newspaper columnist William Safire
  

• 1930: Actor Armin Mueller-Stahl
  

• 1930: Magazine publisher Robert Guccione
  

• 1936: Singer-actor Tommy Steele
  

• 1937: Rock singer-musician Art Neville
  

• 1937: Nat Stuckey (Got Leaving on Her Mind, Days of Sand and Shovels, She Wakes Me Every Morning with a Kiss, Young Love [w/Connie Smith]; songwriter: Sweet Thang, Oh Woman, Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line)
  

• 1938: Olympic Gold Medalist Peter Snell (800-meter run [1960, 1964] and 1500-meter run [1964])
  

• 1939: Singer Eddie Kendricks (The Temptations: My Girl, I Can’t Get Next To You; solo: Keep on Truckin’, Boogie Down, Shoeshine Boy)
  

• 1944: Actor Bernard Hill (Mountains of the Moon, Shirley Valentine, Bellman and True, Drowning by Numbers, No Surrender, The Bounty, Gandhi)
  

• 1945: Actor Ernie Hudson (Tornado!, The Substitute, Congo, Wild Palms, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Ghostbusters series, Joy of Sex, The $5.20 an Hour Dream, Broken Badges)
  

• 1945: Actor Christopher Cazenove (Iron Eagle 3, Three Men and a Little Lady, Windmills of the Gods, Mata Hari, Children of the Full Moon, Eye of the Needle, Zulu Dawn, Royal Flash, A Fine Romance, Dynasty)
  

• 1946: Comedian-actor Eugene Levy
  

• 1951: Rhythm-and-blues singer Wanda Hutchinson (The Emotions)
  

• 1953: Actor Bill Pullman
  

• 1953: Actor Barry Livingston (My Three Sons, Sons and Daughters)
  

• 1953: Country singer Sharon White (wife of Ricky Skaggs)
  

• 1958: Musician Mike Mills (Radio Free Europe,Talk About the Passion, So Central Rain, Seven Chinese Brothers, [Don’t Go Back to] Rockville)
  

• 1961: Pop singer Sarah Dallin (Bananarama)
  

• 1974: Actor Giovanni Ribisi
  

• 1975: Actress Milla Jovovich 
  

• 1975: Singer Bree Sharp

Events in History on this day
  

• 0546: Totila, King of the Ostrogoths, takes Rome
  

• 0693: Death of St. Begga
  

• 0779: Death of St. Sturm
  

• 0942: Assassination of William "Longsword," Duke of Normandy
  

• 1187: Death of Pope Gregory VIII
  

• 1187: Election of Pope Clement III
  

• 1223: Crusaders gathered to free Burriana, Spain, from the Moors
  

• 1273: Death of Rumi
  

• 1399: Tamerlane’s Mongols destroy army of Mahmud Tughluk, Sultan of Delhi, at Panipat.
  

• 1526: Ferdinand (Hapsburg) of Austria elected King of Bohemia; birth of Austria-Hungary
  

• 1531: The Inquisition is established in Portugal
  

• 1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates England's King Henry VIII (2nd time)
  

• 1559: Consecration of Archbishop Parker
  

• 1562: Death of Adrian Willaert, composer
  

• 1777: France recognized American independence.
  

• 1791: New York City traffic regulation creates the 1st one-way street
  

• 1830: South American patriot Simon Bolivar died in Colombia.
  

• 1853: Brahms played his own early piano works in a concert setting off the great war of the critics. Critics who were fond of traditional music hailed Brahms as the next great composer.
  

• 1895: George L. Brownell of Worcester, MA received a patent for his paper-twine machine.
  

• 1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright went on the first successful manned, powered-airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
  

• 1925: Colonel William "Billy" Mitchell was convicted at his court-martial of insubordination.
  

• 1927: U.S. Secretary of State Kellogg suggests a worldwide pact renouncing war.
  

• 1930: The critic Philip Heseltine also known as the composer Peter Warlock committed suicide turning on the gas in his apartment while his girlfriend was away.
  

• 1933: First professional football game: Chicago Bears vs. NY Giants.
  

• 1936: Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen kidded around with his pal, Charlie McCarthy, for the first time on radio. The two debuted on "The Rudy Vallee Show" on NBC.
  

• 1939: The German pocket battleship "Graf Spee" was scuttled by its crew, ending the World War Two Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.
  

• 1944: The US Army announced it was ending its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.
  

• 1948: The Smithsonian Institution accepts the Wright brothers’ plane, the Kitty Hawk.
  

• 1953: Following an earlier decision that favored CBS-TV, the wise minds at the Federal communications Commission changed opinions and decided to approve RCA’s color television specifications.
  

• 1957: The United States successfully test-fired the "Atlas" intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
  

• 1959: The film "On the Beach" premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York City and in 17 other cities. It was the first motion picture to debut simultaneously in major cities around the world.
  

• 1965: Ending an election campaign marked by bitterness and violence, Ferdinand Marcos is declared president of the Philippines.
  

• 1969: The US Air Force closed its Project "Blue Book" by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.
  

• 1975: Lynette Fromme was sentenced in federal court in Sacramento, California, to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Ford.
  

• 1976: WTCG-TV, Atlanta, Georgia, owned by Ted Turner, changed call letters to WTBS, and was uplinked via satellite, to become the first commercial TV station to cover the entire U.S. WTBS started on four cable systems, available in 24,000 homes.
  

• 1986: Eugene Hasenfus, the American convicted by Nicaragua for his part in running guns to the Contras, was pardoned, then released.
  

• 1986: Wayne "Danke Schoen" Newton won a $19.2 million judgment against NBC News, which had aired reports linking Newton to mob figures.
  

• 1987: With election results showing him the winner, South Korea's president-elect, Roh Tae-woo, appealed for "national harmony" while his opponents claimed he'd won through fraud.
  

• 1988: In his first public statement since the US decided to open direct talks with the PLO, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir expressed shock, calling the US decision a "painful" blow.
  

• 1989: More than 100,000 Soviet citizens turned out to honor the late human rights advocate Andrei D. Sakharov, a day before he was buried in Moscow.
  

• 1990: President Bush pledged "no negotiation for one inch" of Kuwaiti territory would take place as he repeated his demand for Iraq's complete withdrawal. 
  

• 1990: President Bush nominated former Tennessee Govenor Lamar Alexander to be secretary of education, succeeding Lauro Cavazos.
  

• 1992: President-elect Clinton tapped former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros to be housing secretary. President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in separate ceremonies.
  

• 1993: Fox Television outbid CBS for the National Football Conference TV package.
  

• 1993: So-called "suicide doctor" Jack Kevorkian was released from jail in Oakland County, Michigan, after promising not to help anyone end their lives for the time being.
  

• 1993: Zubin Mehta and the Chicago Symphony reprised their program of Webern and Schubert, which was notably mainly for the presentation of Webern's early "Passacaglia," which showed what kind of music he might have composed if he had never gone into 12-tone.
  

• 1994: North Korea shot down a US Army helicopter which had strayed north of the demilitarized zone – the co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer David Hilemon, was killed; the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall, was captured and held for nearly two weeks.
  

• 1994: Six shots were fired at the White House by an unidentified gunman.
  

• 1995: Angry voters handed Russian President Boris Yeltsin a stinging rebuff as Communists and right-wing nationalists scored big wins in parliamentary elections on a platform of rolling back democratic reforms. 
  

• 1996: Peruvian guerrillas took hundreds of people hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima (all but 72 of the hostages were later released by the rebels; the siege ended April 22nd, 1997, with a commando raid that resulted in the deaths of all the rebels, two commandos and one hostage).
  

• 1996: Six Red Cross workers were slain by gunmen in Chechnya. Kofi Annan of Ghana was appointed United Nations secretary-general.
  

• 1997: The United States and 33 other countries signed a convention in Paris aimed at eradicating bribery in international business.
  

• 1997: President Clinton's panel on race relations met at Annandale High School in Virginia.
  

• 1998: House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston shocked fellow Republicans by admitting he'd had extramarital affairs.
  

• 1998: The United States hit Iraq with a second wave of punishing airstrikes. Republicans advanced the impeachment case against President Clinton to the House floor for a debate the following day.

• 1999: The U.N. Security Council ended a yearlong deadlock and voted to send weapons inspectors back to Iraq and consider suspending sanctions if Baghdad cooperated. 
  

• 1999: President Clinton signed a law letting millions of disabled Americans retain their government-funded health coverage when they take a job.    

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