On December 7th...

Feast of St. Ambrose

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43 B.C. Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero was assassinated.

1542 Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was born.

1598 Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Italian sculptor and architect, was born.

1732 The Royal Opera House opened at Covent Garden, London, England.

1783 William Pitt, the Younger, became the youngest ever British Prime Minister.

1787 Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1817 British naval officer William Bligh died.

1826 U.S. Senator Edmund G. Ross was born.

1842 The New York Philharmonic gave its first concert.

1843 Henry Perky, the inventor of Shredded Wheat, was born.

1863 Opera composer Pietro Mascagni was born.

1870 David G. Burnet, first President of the Republic of Texas, died.

1876 Novelist Willa Sibert Cather was born.

1894 Architect Ferdinand de Lesseps died.

1902 Illustrator/cartoonist Thomas Nast died.

1909 Leo Baekland received a patent for thermosetting plastic (Bakelite).

1917 The United States declared war on Austria.

1923 Actor Ted Knight was born.

1926 The gas refrigerator was patented.
1926 Businessman Victor Kiam was born.

1932 Actress Ellen Burstyn was born.

1934 Aviator Wiley Post discovered the jet stream.

1941 Japanese planes attacked Pearl harbor.

1942 Singer Harry Chapin was born.

1945 Carl Winstead piloted the first flight of a Cessna 190.

1946 Fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, killed 119 persons.

1947 Baseball player Johnny Bench was born.

1956 Basketball player Larry Bird was born.

1958 The transatlantic passenger liner Leonardo da Vinci was launched at Genoa, Italy.
1958 Rómulo Betancourt was elected President of Venezuela.

1965 A Spanish charter plane struck a house in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, injuring 2 occupants in the house and killing 32 persons on the plane.

1966 A fire at an army barracks in Erzurum, Turkey,killed 68 persons.

1967 Otis Redding recorded "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay."

1970 The first popular elections in Pakistan were held.
1970 Cartoonist Rube Goldberg died.

1971 Wings released their first album, Wild Life.

1972 Apollo 17, the last manned lunar mission, was launched.

1973 Wings released Band on the Run.

1975 Novelist Thornton Wilder died.

1982 In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. became the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1983 Two jets collided at the Madrid, Spain, Airport, killing 93 persons.

1985 Potter Stewart, former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, died.

1986 President Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti.

1988 A PLO delegation led by Yasir Arafat proclaimed the State of Palestine, while also recognizing the existence of the State of Israel.
1988 A magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Spitak, Armenia, killed 25,000-50,000 persons and left up to 500,000 homeless.

1990 Actress Joan Bennett died.

1993 Colin Ferguson killed 6 persons and injured 19 others on the Long Island Rail Road in Nassau County, New York.

1995 The U.S. space probe Galileo went into orbit around Jupiter.

2006 A tornado struck Kensai Green, London, England, seriously damaging about 150 properties.
2006 American diplomat Jeane Kirkpatrick died.

2011 Actor Harry Morgan died.

2016 Musician Greg Lake died.

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This page was last updated on December 07, 2018.