On this day in history

[darlowolf64]

5th December

1945 – Flight 19, a group of TBF Avengers, disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.

Flight 19 was the designation of a group of five Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945, after losing contact during a United States Navy over-water navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 Naval Aviators on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a Martin PBM Mariner flying boat that subsequently launched from Naval Air Station Banana River to search for Flight 19.

A report by Navy investigators concluded that flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor mistook small islands offshore for the Florida Keys after his compasses stopped working, resulting in the flight heading over open sea and away from land. The report was later amended by the Navy to read "cause unknown" to avoid blaming Taylor for the loss of five aircraft and 14 men. The report attributed the loss of the PBM aircraft to an explosion in mid-air while searching for the flight.

Flight 19 undertook a routine navigation and combat training exercise in TBM-type aircraft. The assignment was called "Navigation problem No. 1", a combination of bombing and navigation that other flights had completed or were scheduled to undertake that day. The flight leader, United States Navy Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, had about 2,500 flying hours, mostly in aircraft of this type, while his trainee pilots each had 300 total and 60 flight hours in the Avenger. Taylor had completed a combat tour in the Pacific theater as a torpedo bomber pilot on the aircraft carrier USS Hancock and had recently arrived from NAS Miami where he had also been a VTB (torpedo-bombing plane) instructor. The student pilots had recently completed other training missions in the area where the flight was to take place. They were U.S. Marine Captains Edward Joseph Powers and George William Stivers, U.S. Marine Second Lieutenant Forrest James Gerber and USN Ensign Joseph Tipton Bossi.

The exercise involved three legs, with the flight having flown four, the fourth being returning to NAS Ft. Lauderdale after reaching the Florida coast. After take off, they flew on heading 091° for 56 nmi until reaching Hens and Chickens Shoals, commonly called Chicken Rocks, where low level bombing practice was carried out. The flight was to continue on that heading for another 67 nmi before turning onto a course of 346° for 73 nmi, in the process over-flying Grand Bahama island. The next scheduled turn was to a heading of 241° to fly 120 nmi at the end of which the exercise was completed, and the Avengers would turn left to then return to NAS Ft. Lauderdale.

An unidentified crew member asked Powers, one of the students, for his compass reading. Powers replied: "I don't know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn." Cox then transmitted; "This is FT-74, plane or boat calling 'Powers' please identify yourself so someone can help you." The response after a few moments was a request from the others in the flight for suggestions. FT-74 tried again and a man identified as FT-28 (Taylor) came on. "FT-28, this is FT-74, what is your trouble?" "Both of my compasses are out", Taylor replied, "and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land but it's broken. I am sure I'm in the Keys but I don't know how far down and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale." FT-74 informed the NAS that aircraft were lost, then advised Taylor to put the sun on his port wing and fly north up the coast to Fort Lauderdale.

As it became obvious the flight was lost, air bases, aircraft, and merchant ships were alerted. A Consolidated PBY Catalina departed after 18:00 to search for Flight 19 and guide them back if they could be located. After dark, two Martin PBM Mariner flying boats originally scheduled for their own training flights were diverted to perform square pattern searches in the area west of 29°N 79°W. US Navy Squadron Training No. 49 PBM-5 BuNo 59225 took off at 19:27 from Naval Air Station Banana River (now Patrick Space Force Base), called in a routine radio message at 19:30 and was never heard from again.

At 21:15, the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported it had observed flames from an apparent explosion leaping 100 ft (30 m) high and burning for 10 minutes, at position 28.59°N 80.25°W. Captain Shonna Stanley reported unsuccessfully searching for survivors through a pool of oil and aviation gasoline. The escort carrier USS Solomons also reported losing radar contact with an aircraft at the same position and time.

A 500-page Navy board of investigation report published a few months later made several observations:

• Flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor had mistakenly believed that the small islands he passed over were the Florida Keys, that his flight was over the Gulf of Mexico, and that heading northeast would take them to Florida. It was determined that Taylor had passed over the Bahamas as scheduled, and he did, in fact, lead his flight to the northeast over the Atlantic. The report noted that some subordinate officers did likely know their approximate position, as indicated by radio transmissions stating that flying west would result in reaching the mainland.
• As noted in the report, Taylor refused to change the radio training frequency to the search and rescue radio frequency. (The training frequency was difficult to use because of interference from Cuban radio stations and also a radio carrier wave.)
• Taylor was not at fault because the compasses stopped working.
• The loss of PBM-5 BuNo 59225 was attributed to an explosion.

This report was subsequently amended "cause unknown" by the Navy after Taylor's mother contended that the Navy was unfairly blaming her son for the loss of 5 aircraft and 14 men, when the Navy had neither the bodies nor the airplanes as evidence.

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 5th December...

1578 – Sir Francis Drake, after sailing through Strait of Magellan, raids Valparaiso.
1770 – 29th Regiment of Foot privates Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy are found guilty for the manslaughter of Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray respectively in the Boston Massacre.
1831 – Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.
1847 – Jefferson Davis is elected to the U.S. Senate.
1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
1914 – The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition began in an attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. It is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton on HMS Endurance, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent.

1921 – The Football Association bans women's football in England from league grounds, a ban that stays in place for 50 years.
1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. This repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide prohibition on alcohol.
1936 – The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic is established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.
1941 – World War II: In the Battle of Moscow, Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army.
1941 – World War II: Great Britain declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania.
1943 – World War II: Allied air forces begin attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow, aimed at destroying the German long range reprisal weapons (V-weapons) programme.
1952 – Beginning of the Great Smog in London. A cold fog combines with air pollution and brings the city to a standstill for four days. Later, a Ministry of Health report estimates 4,000 fatalities as a result of it.
1955 – E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery bus boycott.
1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
1958 – The Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.
2005 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there.
2017 – The International Olympic Committee bans Russia from competing at the 2018 Winter Olympics for doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

These daily posts send me down Wiki rabbit holes for hours some evenings!

 

[darlowolf64]

These daily posts send me down Wiki rabbit holes for hours some evenings!

Sorry about that NSL… more tomorrow (or is that later today!)

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

I didn’t realise flight 19 was 1945. I had something in my head it was 1947 or 1948 which would have matched with the first “flying saucer” report which I am sure was 1947. However, no reason to doubt you!

One of the cool things in close encounters of the third kind was the return of the flight and then the pilots walking out of the mother ship at the end of the film as Richard Dreyfus goes the other way.

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

Sorry about that NSL… more tomorrow (or is that later today!)

I'm not particularly well educated, partly my own fault, but I find these posts fascinating. I so wish that I had done history at school as an O Level

 

[leedswolf]

One of the cool things in close encounters of the third kind was the return of the flight and then the pilots walking out of the mother ship at the end of the film as Richard Dreyfus goes the other way.

As with the SS Cotapaxi and her crew.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Yes! Couldn’t remember the name of the ship

 

[darlowolf64]

6th December

1917 – Halifax Explosion: A munitions explosion near Halifax, Nova Scotia kills more than 1,700 people in the largest artificial explosion up to that time.
Blast cloud SS Imo
Devastation of Halifax

On the morning of 6 December 1917, the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Mont-Blanc, laden with high explosives, caught fire and exploded, devastating the Richmond district of Halifax. At least 1,782 people were killed, largely in Halifax and Dartmouth, by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest human-made explosion at the time. It released the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT.

Imo was granted clearance to leave Bedford Basin by signals from the guard ship HMCS Acadia at approximately 7:30 on the morning of 6 December, with Pilot William Hayes on board. The ship entered the Narrows well above the harbour's speed limit in an attempt to make up for the delay experienced in loading her coal. Imo met American tramp steamer SS Clara being piloted up the wrong (western) side of the harbour. The pilots agreed to pass starboard-to-starboard. Soon afterwards, Imo was forced to head even further towards the Dartmouth shore after passing the tugboat Stella Maris, which was travelling up the harbour to Bedford Basin near mid-channel. Horatio Brannen, the captain of Stella Maris, saw Imo approaching at excessive speed and ordered his ship closer to the western shore to avoid an accident.

Francis Mackey, an experienced harbour pilot, had boarded Mont-Blanc on the evening of 5 December 1917; he had asked about "special protections" such as a guard ship, given the Mont-Blanc's cargo, but no protections were put in place. Mont-Blanc started moving at 7:30 am on 6 December and was the second ship to enter the harbour as the anti-submarine net between Georges Island & Pier 21 opened for the morning. Mont-Blanc headed towards Bedford Basin on the Dartmouth side of the harbour. Mackey kept his eye on the ferry traffic between Halifax and Dartmouth and other small boats in the area. He first spotted Imo when she was about 1.2km away and became concerned as her path appeared to be heading towards his ship's starboard side, as if to cut him off. Mackey gave a short blast of his ship's signal whistle to indicate that he had the right of way but was met with two short blasts from Imo, indicating that the approaching vessel would not yield its position. The captain ordered Mont-Blanc to halt her engines and angle slightly to starboard, closer to the Dartmouth side of the Narrows. He let out another single blast of his whistle, hoping the other vessel would likewise move to starboard but was again met with a double-blast.

The collision occurred at 8:45 am. The damage to Mont Blanc was not severe, but barrels of deck cargo toppled and broke open. This flooded the deck with benzol that quickly flowed into the hold. As Imo's engines kicked in, she disengaged, which created sparks inside Mont-Blanc's hull. These ignited the vapours from the benzol. A fire started at the water line and travelled quickly up the side of the ship.

At 9:04:35 am the out-of-control fire on board Mont-Blanc set off her cargo of high explosives. The ship was completely blown apart and a powerful blast wave radiated away from the explosion initially at more than 3,300 ft per second. Temperatures of 5,000 °C and pressures of thousands of atmospheres accompanied the moment of detonation at the centre of the explosion. White-hot shards of iron fell down upon Halifax and Dartmouth. Mont-Blanc's forward 90-mm gun landed approximately 5.6 km north of the explosion site near Albro Lake in Dartmouth with its barrel bent and half torn away by the force of the blast, and the shank of Mont-Blanc's anchor, weighing half a ton, landed 3.2 km south at Armdale.

A judicial inquiry known as the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry was formed to investigate the causes of the collision. Proceedings began at the Halifax Court House on 13 December 1917, presided over by Justice Arthur Drysdale.[130] The inquiry's report of 4 February 1918 blamed Mont-Blanc's captain, Aimé Le Médec, the ship's pilot, Francis Mackey, and Commander F. Evan Wyatt, the Royal Canadian Navy's chief examining officer in charge of the harbour, gates and anti-submarine defences, for causing the collision. Drysdale agreed with Dominion Wreck Commissioner L. A. Demers' opinion that "it was the Mont-Blanc's responsibility alone to ensure that she avoided a collision at all costs" given her cargo.

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 6th December...

1648 – Pride's Purge removes royalist sympathizers from Parliament so that the High Court of Justice could put the King on trial.
1745 – Charles Edward Stuart's army begins retreat during the second Jacobite Rising.
1790 – The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia.
1803 – Five French warships attempting to escape the Royal Naval blockade of Saint-Domingue are all seized by British warships, signifying the end of the Haitian Revolution.
1865 – Georgia ratifies the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
1882 – Transit of Venus, second and last of the 19th century.
1884 – The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed.
1897 – London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs.
1904 – Theodore Roosevelt articulated his "Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the U.S. would intervene in the Western Hemisphere should Latin American governments prove incapable or unstable.
1907 – A coal mine explosion at Monongah, West Virginia, kills 362 workers.
1912 – The Nefertiti Bust is discovered.
1917 – World War I: USS Jacob Jones is the first American destroyer to be sunk by enemy action when it is torpedoed by German submarine SM U-53.
1921 – The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed in London by British and Irish representatives.
1933 – In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses Judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene despite coarse language and sexual content, a leading decision affirming free expression.
1956 – A violent water polo match between Hungary and the USSR takes place during the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, against the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
1969 – Altamont Free Concert: At a free concert performed by the Rolling Stones, eighteen-year old Meredith Hunter is stabbed to death by Hells Angels security guards.
1973 – The Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States House of Representatives votes 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. (On November 27, the Senate confirmed him 92–3.)
1975 – The Troubles: Fleeing from the police, a Provisional IRA unit takes a British couple hostage in their flat on Balcombe Street, London, beginning a six-day siege.
1982 – The Troubles: The Irish National Liberation Army bombs a pub frequented by British soldiers in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing eleven soldiers and six civilians.

 

[darlowolf64]

7th December
A date which will live in infamy... 1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.


Battleship Row on 30th October 1941... Photograph of Battleship Row taken from a Japanese plane at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on USS West Virginia

The attack was preceded by months of negotiations between the United States and Japan over the future of the Pacific. Japanese demands included that the United States end its sanctions against Japan, cease aiding China in the Second Sino-Japanese war, and allow Japan to access the resources of the Dutch East Indies. Anticipating a negative response, Japan sent out its naval attack groups in November 1941 just prior to receiving the Hull note—the United States demand that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina. Japan intended the attack as a preventive action. Its aim was to prevent the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and those of the United States. Over the course of seven hours, there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

On November 26, 1941, a Japanese task force (the Striking Force) of six aircraft carriers – Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku – departed Hittokapu Bay on Etorofu (now Iterup) Island in the Kuril Islands, en route to a position northwest of Hawaii, intending to launch its 408 aircraft to attack Pearl Harbor: 360 for the two attack waves and 48 on defensive combat air patrol (CAP), including nine fighters from the first wave.

The attack took place before any formal declaration of war was made by Japan, but this was not Admiral Yamamoto's intention. He originally stipulated that the attack should not commence until thirty minutes after Japan had informed the United States that peace negotiations were at an end. However, the attack began before the notice could be delivered. Tokyo transmitted the 5000-word notification (commonly called the "14-Part Message") in two blocks to the Japanese Embassy in Washington. Transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassador to deliver it at 1:00 p.m. Washington time, as ordered, and consequently the message was not presented until more than one hour after the attack had begun — but in fact, American code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before it was scheduled to be delivered

The first attack wave of 183 airplanes, led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, was launched north of Oahu. Six airplanes failed to launch due to technical difficulties. The first wave included three groups of airplanes -

• 1st Group(targets: battleships and aircraft carriers)
  • 49 Nakajima B5N Kate bombers armed with 800‑kg armor-piercing bombs, organized in four sections (one failed to launch)
  • 40 B5N bombers armed with Type 91 torpedoes, also in four sections
• 2nd Group – (targets: Ford Island and Wheeler Field)
  • 51 Aichi D3A Val dive bombers armed with 550 lb general-purpose bombs (3 failed to launch)
• 3rd Group– (targets: aircraft at Ford Island, Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, Barber's Point, Kaneohe)
  • 43 Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" fighters for air control and strafing

As the first wave approached Oahu, they encountered and shot down several American aircraft. At least one of these radioed a somewhat incoherent warning. Other warnings from ships off the harbor entrance were still being processed or awaiting confirmation when the Japanese air assault began at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian time. Slow, vulnerable torpedo bombers led the first wave, exploiting the first moments of surprise to attack the most important ships present (the battleships), while dive bombers attacked American air bases across Oahu, starting with Hickam Field, the largest, and Wheeler Field, the main United States Army Air Forces fighter base. The 171 planes in the second wave attacked the Army Air Forces' Bellows Field, near Kaneohe on the windward side of the island, and Ford Island. The only aerial opposition came from a handful of P-36 Hawks, P-40 Warhawks and some SBD Dauntless dive bombers from the carrier Enterprise.

Ninety minutes after it began, the attack was over. 2,008 sailors were killed and 710 others wounded; 218 soldiers and airmen (who were part of the Army prior to the independent United States Air Force in 1947) were killed and 364 wounded; 109 Marines were killed and 69 wounded; and 68 civilians were killed and 35 wounded. In total, 2,403 Americans were killed, and 1,178 were wounded. Eighteen ships were sunk or run aground, including five battleships. All of the Americans killed or wounded during the attack were legally non-combatants, given that there was no state of war when the attack occurred. Of the American fatalities, nearly half were due to the explosion of Arizona's forward magazine after she was hit by a modified 16-inch shell.

USS Arizona (left) and USS West Virginia (right)

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 7th December...

1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.
1732 – The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London, England.
1787 – Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
1842 – First concert of the New York Philharmonic, founded by Ureli Corelli Hill.
1904 – Comparative fuel trials begin between warships HMS Spiteful and HMS Peterel: Spiteful was the first warship powered solely by fuel oil, and the trials led to the obsolescence of coal in ships of the Royal Navy.
1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.
1936 – Australian cricketer Jack Fingleton becomes the first player to score centuries in four consecutive Test innings.
1942 – World War II: British commandos conduct Operation Frankton, a raid on shipping in Bordeaux harbour. The members of the raid became known as The Cockleshell Heroes
1963 – Instant replay makes its debut during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo Moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth


1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.
1982 – The Senior Road Tower collapses in less than 17 seconds. Five workers on the tower are killed and three workers on a building nearby are injured.
1987 – Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, a British Aerospace 146-200A, crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and steers the plane into the ground.

 

[darlowolf64]

8th December

1980 – John Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota in New York City

On the evening of 8 December 1980, English musician John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, was shot and fatally wounded in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in New York City. The killer, Mark David Chapman, was an American Beatles fan who was jealous and enraged by Lennon's rich lifestyle, alongside his 1966 comment that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus". Chapman said he was inspired by the fictional character Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, a "phony-killer" who loathes hypocrisy.

Chapman planned the killing over several months and waited for Lennon at the Dakota on the morning of 8 December. Early in the evening, Chapman met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy and subsequently left for a recording session at the Record Plant. Later that night, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to the Dakota. As Lennon and Ono approached the entrance of the building, Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets from a .38 special revolver, four of which hit Lennon in the back. Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in a police car, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:15 p.m. at age 40. Chapman remained at the scene reading The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by the police. It was later discovered that Chapman considered Lennon's friend David Bowie a target.

A worldwide outpouring of grief ensued; crowds gathered at Roosevelt Hospital and in front of the Dakota, and at least three Beatles fans died by suicide. The next day, Lennon was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. In lieu of a funeral, Ono requested ten minutes of silence around the world. Chapman pleaded guilty to murdering Lennon and was given a sentence of 20-years-to-life imprisonment. He has been denied parole twelve times since he became eligible in 2000.

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 8th December...

877 – Louis the Stammerer (son of Charles the Bald) is crowned king of the West Frankish Kingdom at Compiègne. Great names that royalty had in the past... (Would our King be "Charles the Big Ears"?)
1660 – A woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.
1912 – Leaders of the German Empire hold an Imperial War Council to discuss the possibility that war might break out.
1914 – World War I: A squadron of Britain's Royal Navy defeats the Imperial German East Asia Squadron in the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
1922 – Two days after coming into existence, the Irish Free State executes four leaders of the Irish Republican Army.
1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares December 7 to be "a date which will live in infamy", after which the U.S. declares war on Japan.
1941 – World War II: Japanese forces simultaneously invade Shanghai International Settlement, Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies.
1943 – World War II: The German 117th Jäger Division destroys the monastery of Mega Spilaio in Greece and executes 22 monks and visitors as part of reprisals that culminated a few days later with the Massacre of Kalavryta.
1953 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, which leads to an American program to supply equipment and information on nuclear power to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world.
1955 – The Flag of Europe is adopted by Council of Europe.
1962 – Workers at four New York City newspapers (this later increases to nine) go on strike for 114 days.
1972 – United Airlines Flight 553, a Boeing 737, crashes after aborting its landing attempt at Chicago Midway International Airport, killing 45. This is the first-ever loss of a Boeing 737.
1987 – Cold War: The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House.
1987 – An Israeli army tank transporter kills four Palestinian refugees and injures seven others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the Israel–Gaza Strip border, which has been cited as one of the events which sparked the First Intifada.
1988 – A United States Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II crashes into an apartment complex in Remscheid, Germany, killing five people and injuring 50 others.
1990 – The Galileo spacecraft flies past Earth for the first time.
2004 – Columbus nightclub shooting: Nathan Gale opens fire at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, killing former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell and three others before being shot dead by a police officer.
2013 – Metallica performs a show in Antarctica, making them the first band to perform on all seven continents.

 

[darlowolf64]

9th December

1688 – Glorious Revolution: Williamite forces defeat Jacobites at Battle of Reading, forcing James II to flee England.

On Wednesday 5 November 1688,[a] William III, then the Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel provinces of the Dutch Republic, landed in Devon at the head of a Dutch army in an attempt to wrest control of the country. Five weeks later, on 7 December, the Prince of Orange and a strong body of troops had reached Hungerford. While there, English supporters came into the town, including several hundred cavalry headed by northern lords.

James had posted an advance guard of 600 Irish Catholics under Patrick Sarsfield in Reading to stop the march of the Dutch towards London. As wild rumours – known as the Irish Fright – asserted they were planning to massacre the townsfolk, the inhabitants asked William for help. On Sunday 9 December, a relief force of 280 of William's dragoons was sent. Warned of the Jacobite positions, they attacked from an unexpected direction, and got into the centre of Reading, where Broad Street gives rise to one of the alternate names for this encounter. They were supported by Reading men shooting from windows. James' forces retreated in confusion; leaving an unknown number dead, with reports varying widely from twelve to fifty killed, depending on the account. The number of casualties for William's men is unknown however at least one is referred to as a Catholic officer. Many of the dead were buried in the churchyard of St Giles' Church.

The battle is described with blatant bias by Daniel Defoe in his A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain. His is, however, one of the few contemporary accounts. Defoe, who had supported, and possibly fought for, the Duke of Monmouth in his earlier rebellion against James II was welcoming of the Dutch invasion. He describes how a squadron of "Irish dragoons" was routed by the "irresistible fury" of a Dutch force who chased many of the fleeing soldiers to nearby Twyford.

James was already convinced that only Irish troops could be relied on to defend him, but their defeat by an inferior force and the willingness of the people of Reading to support a Protestant revolt against him underlined his insecurity. On Tuesday 11 December James fled London in an attempt to escape. Unsuccessful at first, he eventually escaped to France, where he found the support of Louis XIV, and then Ireland, where most of the population supported him. His last hopes of regaining the throne were dashed with his defeat in the Williamite War in Ireland.

In light of proposals he had received from James while in Hungerford, William had decided not to immediately proceed to London, but to accept an invitation from the University of Oxford. On 11 December, William set off for Abingdon. On hearing of James's flight, he turned and headed down the Thames valley through Wallingford and Henley. He accepted the submission of the Jacobite troops he met on the way, arriving at Windsor on 14 December 1688.

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 9th December...

1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia.
1824 – Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.
1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio following the Siege of Béxar.
1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African American governor of a U.S. state following the impeachment of Henry C. Warmoth.
1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland.
1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
1935 – Walter Liggett, an American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
1946 – The subsequent Nuremberg trials begin with the Doctors' Trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
1946 – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India.
1948 – The Genocide Convention is adopted.
1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; with witnesses reporting something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh.
1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System.
1969 – U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers proposes his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accept it over the objections of the PLO, which leads to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
1973 – British and Irish authorities sign the Sunningdale Agreement in an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (with rinderpest in 2011 being the other).
1987 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
2008 – Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
2017 – The Marriage Amendment Bill receives royal assent and comes into effect, making Australia the 26th country to legalize same-sex marriage.

 

[darlowolf64]

10th December

1901 – The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.



Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes". Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.

According to his will and testament read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896, a foundation established by Alfred Nobel would reward those who serve humanity. The Nobel Prize was funded by Alfred Nobel's personal fortune. According to the official sources, Alfred Nobel bequeathed most of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation that now forms the economic base of the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organisation on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. Once the Nobel Foundation and its guidelines were in place, the Nobel Committees began collecting nominations for the inaugural prizes. Subsequently, they sent a list of preliminary candidates to the prize-awarding institutions.

The Nobel Committee's Physics Prize shortlist cited Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and Philipp Lenard's work on cathode rays. The Academy of Sciences selected Röntgen for the prize. In the last decades of the 19th century, many chemists had made significant contributions. Thus, with the Chemistry Prize, the academy "was chiefly faced with merely deciding the order in which these scientists should be awarded the prize". The academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for Jacobus van 't Hoff. Van 't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in chemical thermodynamics.

The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature. A group including 42 Swedish writers, artists, and literary critics protested against this decision, having expected Leo Tolstoy to be awarded. Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticised this prize because they consider Prudhomme a mediocre poet. Feldman's explanation is that most of the academy members preferred Victorian literature and thus selected a Victorian poet.[41] The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist and microbiologist Emil von Behring. During the 1890s, von Behring developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria, which until then had been causing thousands of deaths each year.

The first Nobel Peace Prize went to the Swiss Jean Henri Dunant for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention, and jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization.

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 10th December...

1520 – Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate.
1541 – Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham are executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII.
1652 – Defeat at the Battle of Dungeness causes the Commonwealth of England to reform its navy.
1665 – The Royal Netherlands Marine Corps is founded by Michiel de Ruyter.
1684 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.
1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.
1799 – France adopts the metre as its official unit of length.
1817 – Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state.
1861 – American Civil War: The Confederate States of America accept a rival state government's pronouncement that declares Kentucky to be the 13th state of the Confederacy.
1864 – American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.
1898 – Spanish–American War: The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the conflict. Spain cedes administration of Cuba to the United States, and the United States agrees to pay Spain $20 million for the Philippines.
1902 – The opening of the reservoir of the Aswan Dam in Egypt.
1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field.
1909 – Selma Lagerlöf becomes the first female writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1932 – Thailand becomes a constitutional monarchy.
1936 – Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII signs the Instrument of Abdication.
1941 – World War II: The Royal Navy capital ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse are sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers near British Malaya.

1942 – World War II: Government of Poland in exile send Raczyński's Note (the first official report on the Holocaust) to 26 governments who signed the Declaration by United Nations.
1948 – The Human Rights Convention is signed by the United Nations.
1953 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill receives the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1963 – An assassination attempt on the British High Commissioner in Aden kills two people and wounds dozens more.
1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo.
1978 – Arab–Israeli conflict: Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1993 – The last shift leaves Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland. The closure of the 156-year-old pit marks the end of the old County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages. The Colliery site was cleared soon afterwards, and the Stadium of Light, the stadium of Sunderland A.F.C., was built over it, opening in July 1997 to replace nearby Roker Park.

 

[darlowolf64]

11th December

1994 – A bomb explodes on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, en route from Manila, Philippines, to Tokyo, Japan, killing one. The captain is able to land the plane safely.



Philippine Airlines Flight 434, sometimes referred to as PAL434 or PR434, was a flight on December 11, 1994, from Cebu to Tokyo on a Boeing 747-283B that was seriously damaged by a bomb, killing one passenger and damaging vital control systems, although the plane was in a repairable state. The bombing was a test run of the unsuccessful Bojinka terrorist attacks. The Boeing 747, tail number EI-BWF, was flying the second leg of a route from Ninoy Aquino International Airport, formerly Manila International Airport in the Philippines, to Narita International Airport, in Tokyo, Japan, with a stop at Mactan–Cebu International Airport, Cebu, in the Philippines. After the bomb detonated, 58-year-old veteran pilot Captain Eduardo "Ed" Reyes was able to land the aircraft, saving it and the remaining passengers and crew.

Authorities later discovered that Ramzi Yousef, a passenger on the aircraft's prior flight leg, had placed the explosive. Yousef boarded the flight under the fake Italian name "Armaldo Forlani", an incorrect spelling of the name of the Italian legislator Arnaldo Forlani, in order not to get caught. Yousef was later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Ramzi Yousef boarded the aircraft for the Manila to Cebu leg of the flight. The plane departed from Manila at 5:35 a.m. After the plane was airborne, he went into the lavatory with his toiletry bag in hand and took off his shoes to get out the batteries, wiring, and spark source hidden in the heel below a level where metal detectors in use at the time could not detect. Yousef removed a modified Casio digital watch from his wrist to be used as a timer, unpacked the remaining materials from his toiletry bag, and assembled his bomb. He set the timer for four hours later, when he would be long disembarked and the plane would be far out over the ocean and en route to Tokyo during the next leg of its journey, put the entire bomb back into the bag, and returned to his assigned seat.

After moving to seat 26K following a granted permission by a flight attendant due to his claim that he could get a better view from that seat, Yousef tucked the assembled bomb into the life vest pocket underneath. He had chosen this location based on a misunderstanding of where the fuel tanks were located on this specific 747 configuration. In some 747 configurations, the fuel tank is located underneath the center of the plane - where placement of the bomb would likely have resulted in considerable damage and could have even brought the plane down (similar to the Lockerbie bombing which occurred 6 years earlier). However, the 747 performing the flight had the fuel tank further back due to its cabin configuration, making seat 26K two rows forward of the center fuel tank. After he had finished planting the bomb, Yousef exited the aircraft in Cebu.[10] Philippine domestic Flight Attendant Maria De La Cruz noticed that Yousef had switched seats during the Manila to Cebu flight and had exited the plane in Cebu alongside the domestic cabin crew, but did not pass this information along to the international flight crew which boarded at Cebu for the trip to Tokyo.

At 8:38 a.m., after a 38-minute delay due to airport congestion, the plane took off with a total of 273 passengers on board. Among them was 24-year-old Haruki Ikegami, a Japanese industrial sewing machine maker returning from a business trip to Cebu, occupying seat 26K. At 11:43 a.m. Eastern Indonesian Time, 4 hours after Yousef planted his bomb, the device exploded Ikegami's seat injuring an additional ten passengers in the adjacent seats in front of and behind seat 26K. The blast also blew off a two-square-foot portion of the cabin floor leaving a gaping hole leading to the cargo hold location, and the cabin's rapid expansion from the explosion severed a number of control cables in the ceiling that controlled the plane's right aileron, as well as cables that connected to the steering controls of both the Captain and First Officer. Assistant purser Fernando Bayot tried to pull Ikegami out of the hole that was from the explosion, but soon Bayot realized that part of the latter's body was missing, and that Ikegami had died. In order to prevent additional panic, Bayot called another flight attendant over to give the appearance that they were tending to Ikegami's needs with a blanket and oxygen mask, then reported the extent of the passenger injuries to the cockpit.

Immediately after the bombing, the aircraft banked hard to the right, but the autopilot quickly fixed the bank. After the blast, Captain Reyes asked Systems Engineer Dexter Comendador to survey the blast area to check for damage. Reyes placed the Mayday call, requesting landing at Naha Airport, Okinawa Island, Okinawa Prefecture. The Japanese air traffic controller experienced difficulty in trying to understand Reyes' request, so American air traffic controllers from a U.S. military base on Okinawa took over and processed Reyes' landing. They directed a USAF Learjet towards PAL 434 to visually check for damage of the outer fuselage and to verify that the landing gear was in place. By using the throttles to steer the plane, reducing air speed to both control the radius of turns and to allow the plane to descend, and dumping fuel to lessen the strain on the landing gear, the Captain landed the damaged 747 at Naha Airport at 12:45 p.m., one hour after the bomb exploded. The aircraft's other 272 passengers and 20 crew members survived.

 

[darlowolf64]

Also on 11th December...

• 1688 – Glorious Revolution: James II of England, while trying to flee to France, throws the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames.
• 1792 – French Revolution: King Louis XVI of France is put on trial for treason by the National Convention.
• 1901 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, England to Saint John's, Newfoundland.
• 1907 – The New Zealand Parliament Buildings are almost completely destroyed by fire.
• 1913 – More than two years after it was stolen from the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, Italy. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, is immediately arrested.
• 1917 – World War I: British General Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot and declares martial law.
• 1920 – Irish War of Independence: In retaliation for a recent IRA ambush, British forces burn and loot numerous buildings in Cork city. Many civilians report being beaten, shot at, robbed and verbally abused by British forces.
• 1931 – Statute of Westminster 1931: The British Parliament establishes legislative equality between the UK and the Dominions of the Commonwealth—Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland.
• 1934 – Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the final time.
• 1936 – Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII's abdication as King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India, becomes effective.
• 1941 – World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.
• 1941 – World War II: Poland declares war on the Empire of Japan.
• 1941 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy suffers its first loss of surface vessels during the Battle of Wake Island.
• 1946 – The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.
• 1960 – French forces crack down in a violent clash with protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French President Charles de Gaulle.
• 1962 – Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, is the last person to be executed in Canada.
• 1964 – Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
• 1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon.
• 1978 – The Lufthansa heist is committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time.
• 2005 – The Buncefield Oil Depot catches fire in Hemel Hempstead, England.

• 2006 – Felipe Calderón, the President of Mexico, launches a military-led offensive to put down the drug cartel violence in the state of Michoacán. This effort is often regarded as the first event in the Mexican Drug War.
• 2008 – Bernie Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
• 2009 – Finnish game developer Rovio Entertainment releases the hit mobile game Angry Birds internationally on iOS.
• 2017 – New York City Subway bombing: A pipe bomb partially detonates in the New York City Subway, in the Times Square–42nd Street/Port Authority Bus Terminal. Four people are injured, including the perpetrator, 27-year-old Akayed Ullah.