http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Dec 12, 1806: Cherokee leader and Confederate General Stand Watie is born
On this day in 1806, Confederate General Stand Watie is born near Rome, Georgia. Watie, a Cherokee Indian, survived the tribe's Trail of Tears in the 1830s and became the only Native American to achieve the rank of general during the Civil War.
Watie came from an influential family and played a major role during the Cherokee difficulties in Georgia. The tribe was under increasingly intense pressure by their Anglo neighbors to move to a reservation in the West. Watie was part of a faction that began to believe that voluntary removal might be the only way to preserve their autonomy. He was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which ceded the Cherokee's Georgia lands for a reservation in Indian Territory. After the disastrous Trail of Tears trek to the West, during which one in four Cherokee died, all who signed the treaty were assassinated except for Watie.
Even though the Cherokee suffered at the hands of Southerners, Watie and others always saw the federal government as the real culprit. When the South began to secede from the Union in 1860, Watie and others supported the new Confederacy. Watie was named colonel and raised a regiment of 300 mixed-blood Cherokee. Watie's first action came against Unionist Creek Indians near the Kansas border in 1861. At the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas in 1862, Watie's regiment captured a Union battery in the midst of a Confederate defeat.
From the summer of 1862 until the end of the war, Watie served back in his home territory. In 1864, he captured a Union steamboat on the Arkansas River and a large supply train at Cabin Creek in Indian Territory. Mostly, however, Watie fought against his own people. The Cherokee became bitterly divided between the followers of John Ross, who pledged loyalty to the Union, and Watie, who stood by his Confederate allies. For the rest of the war, the Cherokee waged a bitter internecine guerilla war. After a brief foray into the tobacco business after the war, Watie died in 1871 at his home along Honey Creek in Indian Territory.
Dec 12, 1913: Mona Lisa recovered in Florence
Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Mona Lisa is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia's hotel room in Florence. Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as Louvre janitors on the morning of August 21, 1911.
Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, completed The Mona Lisa, a portrait of the wife of wealthy Florentine citizen Francesco del Gioconda, in 1504. The painting, also known as La Gioconda, depicts the figure of a woman with an enigmatic facial expression that is both aloof and alluring, seated before a visionary landscape.
After the recovery of The Mona Lisa, Peruggia was convicted in Italy of the robbery and spent just 14 months in jail. The Mona Lisa was eventually returned to the Louvre, where it remains today, exhibited behind bulletproof glass. It is arguably the most famous painting in the world and is seen by millions of visitors every year.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
627 - Battle at Nineveh: Byzantine emperor Heraclius beats Perzen
1098 - 1st Crusaders capture & plunder Mara Syria
1408 - Order of the Dragon: The Order of the Dragon was first created on December 12, 1408 by Emperor Sigismund, then King of Hungary, and his wife Queen Barbara of Celje following the battle for possession of Bosnia.
1474 - Isabella crowns herself queen of Castile & Aragon
1479 - Jews are expelled from Schlettstadt Alsace by Emperor Frederick III
1524 - Pope Clement VII approves Organization of Jewish Community of Rome
1527 - Composer Adrian Willaert moves from Milan to Venice
1653 - Barebone-parliament ends
1677 - Brandenburgs army occupies Stettin
1700 - Utrecht/Overijssel/Buren/Leerdam/Ijsselstein adopt Gregorian calendar
1715 - Russian/Prussian troops occupy Stralsund [NS=12/23]
1769 - Pope Clement XIV proclaims a universal jubilee
1787 - Pennsylvania becomes 2nd state to ratify US constitution
1791 - Bank of US opens
1792 - In Vienna, Ludwig Von Beethoven (22) receives 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn
1800 - Washington DC established as capital of US
1812 - French invasion of Russia comes to an end.
1822 - Mexico officially recognized as an independent nation by US
1858 - 1st Canadian coins circulated (1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent & 20 cent)
1862 - Battle of Dumfries, VA
1862 - Naval Engagement at Yazoo River, MS (USS CAIRO torpedoed)
1870 - Joseph Rainey (SC) became 1st black sworn into House of Reps
1871 - Jules Janssen discovers dark lines in solar corona spectrum
1878 - Joseph Pulitzer begins publishing "St Louis Dispatch"
1884 - 1st Test match played at the Adelaide Oval
1897 - Anti-Jewish violence breaks out in Bucharest Romania
1897 - Rudolph Dirks' 1st Katzenjammer cartoon strip in NY Journal
1897 - Belo Horizonte, the first planned city of Brazil, is founded.
1898 - 1st 1st-class game between NSW & Tasmania
1899 - 1st case of plague on Oahu, Hawaii
1899 - George F Bryant of Boston patents the wooden golf tee
1900 - National Negro Anthem, "Lift Every Voice & Sing," composed
Inventor and Nobel Laureate Guglielmo MarconiInventor and Nobel Laureate Guglielmo Marconi 1901 - Marconi receives 1st transatlantic radio signal, England to US
1903 - Roger Casement completes report about abuses in Belgian Congo
1904 - CMS McClellans "Leah Kleschna," premieres in NYC
1906 - Oscar Straus, 1st Jewish government member, appointed Sec of Commerce
1911 - Delhi replaces Calcutta as the capital of India.
1912 - R Friml/O Harbachs musical "Firefly," premieres in NYC
1913 - Hebrew language officially used to teach in Palestinian schools
1914 - The largest one-day percentage drop in the history of Dow Jones Industrial Average, down 24.39%.
1915 - 1st all-metal aircraft (Junkers J-1) test flown at Dessau Germany
1915 - Aristide Briand forms French war government
1915 - Russian troops overrun Hamadan, Persia
1917 - French troop train derails in French Alps killing 543
1917 - Rev Edward Flanagan forms Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb
1920 - Maurice Ravels ballet "La Valse," premieres in Paris
1925 - Arthur Heinman coins term "motel," opens Motel Inn, San Luis Obispo
1925 - Cossack officer/ex-premier Reza Chan becomes shah of Persia
1925 - Last Qajar Shah of Iran deposed; Rezā Shāh Pahlavi takes over
1926 - Leningrad: premier of Dmitri Sjostakovitsj' 1st Pianoconcert
1928 - Nichols/Brownes "Wings over Europe," premieres in NYC
1930 - Baseball Rules Committee greatly revises the rule book
1930 - Baseball changes rule, ball bounces into stands not a HR, now a double
1930 - Start of the 1st Australia v West Indies Test (at Adelaide)
1931 - Japanese government of Imukai forms
1932 - S N Behrmans "Biography," premieres in NYC
1932 - USSR & China resume diplomatic relations
1936 - Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek declares war on Japan
1937 - NBC & RCA sends 1st mobile-TV vans onto the streets of NY
1937 - Washington Redskins win NFL championship
1937 - Japanese aircraft shell & sink US gunboat Panay on Yangtze River in China. (Japan apologized & eventually paid US $2.2M in reparations)
1939 - Russ Indigirka capsizes in blizzard off Japanese coast; 750 die
1940 - British troops conquer Sidi el-Barrani
1941 - European reservists on Java mobilizes
1941 - German occupying army do a house search in Paris looking for Jews
1941 - Russian 20th army recaptures Soljetsjnogorsk
1942 - German offensive in South Western Stalingrad
1942 - A fire in a hostel in St. John's, Newfoundland kills 100 people.
1945 - Special Court of justice convicts NSB-leader Mussert to death
1946 - Ice plant collapses, shearing a tenement building & burying 38
1946 - Tide detergent introduced
1946 - UN accepts 6 Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D Rockefeller Jr
1947 - United Mine Workers union withdrew from AFL
1948 - Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre - 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacre 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.
1949 - AL votes 7-1 rejecting legalizing the spitball
1950 - 16th Heisman Trophy Award: Vic Janowicz, Ohio State (HB)
1950 - Baseball owners vote to drop 4-year old bonus & high school rule
1951 - Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement
1952 - Dallas Texans (former Boston Yanks) play last game, last original team
1953 - Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane
1955 - 1st prototype of hovercraft patented by Brit eng Christoper Cockerell
1956 - Commencement of the Irish Republican Army's Border Campaign.
1957 - Maj Adrian Drew flies 1,943 kph in F-101 Voodoo
1957 - US announces manufacture of Borazon (harder than diamond)
1958 - Dutch social democratic party-ministers/premier Drees dismissed
1958 - Fergie Gupte takes 9-102 with leggies v W Indies at Kanpur
1959 - UN Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space is established
1961 - Ham radio satellite Oscar 1 launched with military Discoverer 36
Clergyman and Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King Jr.Clergyman and Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King Jr. 1961 - Martin Luther King Jr & 700 demonstraters arrested in Albany Ga
1962 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1963 - Argentina asks for extradition of ex-president Peron
1963 - Frank Sinatra Jr returned after being kidnapped
1963 - Kenya (formerly British East Africa) declares independence from UK
1964 - Cleveland Browns' Frank Ryan sets club record of 5 TD passes
1964 - Shooting starts for "Star Trek" pilot "The Cage" (Menagerie)
1965 - Beatles last Great Britain concert (Capitol Theatre in Cardiff Wales)
1965 - Doug Walters makes maiden Test ton in 1st Test, goes on to 155
1965 - Gale Sayers of Chicago Bears scores 6 TDs, ties NFL record
1965 - Vivian Beaumont Theater opens at 65th St & Amsterdam Ave NYC
1966 - US Supreme Courts votes 4-3 allowing Braves to move to Atlanta
1967 - US launches Pioneer 8 into solar orbit
1968 - Arthur Ashe becomes 1st black to be ranked #1 in tennis
1968 - Rolling Stones film TV show "Rock 'n Roll Circus"-never aired
1968 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1969 - "Hello Dolly" with Barbra Striesand premieres
1969 - Bill Toomey achieves world record-score (8417 points)
1969 - Bomb attack on bank in Milan, 14 killed
1969 - Strategia della tensione: Piazza Fontana bombing - The offices of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, Milan, are bombed.
1970 - Polish government proclaims price rise
1970 - Small Astronomy Satellite Explorer 42 launched to study X-rays
1970 - USSR performs underground nuclear test
1973 - Canada begins selling Olympic coins ($5 & $10 silver coins)
1973 - San Diego files anti-trust against NL (stopping Padres move to DC)
1975 - Gas stove explodes & starts fire killing 138 (Mecca Saudi Arabia)
38th US President Gerald Ford38th US President Gerald Ford 1975 - Sara Jane Moore pled guilty to trying to kill US President Gerald Ford
1976 - QB Joe Namath last game as a NY Jet
1977 - Yanks purchase Andy Messersmith from Braves
1979 - Gold hits record $462.50 an ounce
1979 - Rhodesia becomes independent nation of Zimbabwe
1979 - President of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq, confers Nishan-e-Imtiaz on Nobel laureate Dr Abdus Salam.
1980 - US's copyright law amended to include computer programs
1981 - "1st" closes at Martin Beck Theater NYC after 37 performances
1981 - Gambia & Senegal sign agreement to be known as Senegambia in Feb 1982
1981 - Wayne Gretzky scores quickest 50th goal (game 39)
1982 - "Herman Van Veen: All of Him" closes at Ambassador NYC after 6 perf
1982 - $9,800,000 in cash stolen from money transport car in NYC
1982 - 57th Australian Womens Tennis: C Evert beats M Navratilova (63 26 63)
1982 - Joanne Carner/John Mahaffey wins LPGA J C Penney Golf Classic
1983 - A truck bomb explodes at US Embassy in Kuwait
NHL all-time top scorer Wayne GretzkyNHL all-time top scorer Wayne Gretzky 1985 - 248 US soldiers & 8 crew members die in Arrow Air charter crash
1985 - DC-8 crashes near Gander, Newfoundland; 258 die
1985 - NASA launches space vehicle S-207
1986 - David Boon's fourth Test century, 103 v England at Adelaide
1986 - James "Bone Crusher" Smith TKO's WBA champ Tim Witherspoon in Madison Square Garden
1986 - Russian Tupolev-134 crashes in East Berlin, 70 killed
1986 - South African journalist Zwelakhe Sisulu arrested
1987 - Mookie Blaylock sets NBA record of 13 steals in a game
1987 - Okla's sets NCAA record of 33 steals vs Centenary
1987 - Rollermania at Madison Square Garden, Eastern Express beats Midwest Pioneers
1988 - 3 trains collide in London, 40 die
1988 - NYC Subway system adds new stations (Z line)
1988 - PLO leader Yasi Arafat accepts Israel's right to exist
1988 - Sandra Miller of Queens sues Mike Tyson for sexual harassment
1990 - US accuses Iraq of dragging its feet on dates for talks
Heavyweight Boxing Champion Mike TysonHeavyweight Boxing Champion Mike Tyson 1990 - US ambassador to Kuwait, Nathaniel Howell leaves Kuwait
1991 - Maastricht Treaty signed to create a European Community
1991 - NJ Nets set NBA record of 22 blocks beating Nuggets 121-81
1991 - Orion Pictures filed Chapter 11 for bankruptcy protection
1991 - Tampa Bay Bucaneer Dexter Manley, retires after failing drug test
1992 - 58th Heisman Trophy Award: Gino Torretta, Miami-Fla (QB)
1992 - 6.8-7.5 earthquake strikes Flores Island (tsunami kills 3,000)
1992 - Japanese crown prince Naruhito announces engagement to Masaka Owada
1992 - Julia Kurotchkina, 18, of Russia, crowned 42nd Miss World
1992 - NY Giants lose 19-0 to Phoenix Cardinals
1993 - "Any Given Day" closes at Longacre Theater NYC after 32 performances
1993 - "Kentucky Cycle" closes at Royale Theater NYC after 34 performances
1993 - WAQX 104.3 (Q-104) rock format replaces WNCN classic format in NYC
1995 - CBC announces Radio Canada International service to end on March 31
1995 - Israeli PM Shimon Peres address both house of US congress
1995 - NBA referees return to work after striking
1995 - Amendment to make it illegal to physically desecrate the flag turned down by senate 63-36 (need 2/3 vote)
1996 - Assassination attempt on Uday (Iraqi's heir to Sadam Hussain)
1996 - Marlins sign their 6th free-agent since Nov 22, Moises Alou
1997 - Carlos the Jackal, "professional revolutionary" goes on trial in Paris
1997 - Florida releases Alex Arias, the last original Marlin
1997 - Japanese train builders (Maglev) claim world speed record at 332 MPH
1997 - Red Sox sign Pedro Martinez to record 6 year $69 million contract
1997 - SWAT team shoots John E Armstrong in Fla, freeing 2 young hostages
1997 - TWA 800 hearings end
1997 - Fed judge sentences Autumn Jackson, who claims to be Bill Cosby's daughter, to 26 months for trying to extort $40 million from him
2000 - The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore
2006 - Peugeot produces its last car at the Ryton Plant signalling the end of mass car production in Coventry, formerly a major centre of the British motor industry.
1787 - Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 1792 - In Vienna, 22-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven received one of his first lessons in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn. 1800 - Washington, DC, was established as the capital of the United States. 1870 - Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black lawmaker to be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives. 1896 - Guglielmo Marconi gave the first public demonstration of radio at Toynbee Hall, London. 1897 - The comic strip"The Katzenjammer Kids" (Hans and Fritz), by Rudolph Dirks, appeared in the New York Journal for the first time. 1899 - George Grant patented the wooden golf tee. 1900 - Charles M. Schwab formed the United States Steel Corporation. 1901 - The first radio signal to cross the Atlantic was picked up near St. John's Newfoundland, by inventor Guglielmo Marconi. 1912 - The Mother's Day International Association was incorporated with the purpose of furthering meaningful observations of Mother's Day. 1915 - The first all-metal aircraft, the German Junkers J1, made its first flight. 1917 - Father Edward Flanagan opened Boys Town in Nebraska. The farm village was for wayward boys. In 1979 it was opened to girls. 1925 - The "Motel Inn," the first motel in the world, opened in San Luis Obispo, CA. 1937 - Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat "Panay" on China's Yangtze River. Japan apologized for the attack, and paid $2.2 million in reparations. 1946 - A United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate to be the site of the UN's headquarters. The land was offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. 1947 - The United Mine Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of Labor. 1951 - The U.S. Navy Department announced that the world's first nuclear powered submarine would become the sixth ship to bear the name Nautilus. 1955 - It was announced that the Ford Foundation gave $500,000,000 to private hospitals, colleges and medical schools. 1955 - British engineer Christopher Cockerell patented the first hovercraft. 1963 - Kenya gained its independence from Britain. 1975 - Sara Jane Moore pled guilty to a charge of trying to kill U.S. President Ford in San Francisco the previous September. 1982 - 20,000 women encircled Greenham Common air base in Britain in protest against proposed cite of U.S. Cruise missiles there. 1983 - Car bombs were set off in front of the French and U.S. embassies in Kuwait City. Shiite extremists were responsible for the five deaths and 86 wounded. Total of five bombs went off in different locations. 1984 - In a telephone conversation with U.S. President Reagan, William J. Schroeder complained of a delay in his Social Security benefits. Schroeder received a check the following day. 1985 - 248 American soldiers and eight crewmembers were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed in Gander, Newfoundland after takeoff. 1989 - Britain forcibly removed 51 Vietnamese from Hong Kong and returned them to their homeland. 1989 - Leona Helmsley was fined $7 million and sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion. 1994 - The Brazilian Supreme Court acquitted former President Fernando Collor de Mello of corruption charges that had forced him to resign in 1992. 1994 - IBM stopped shipments of personal computers with Intel's flawed Pentium chip. 1995 - The U.S. Senate stopped a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against the American flag. 1995 - Two French airmen shot down over Bosnia arrived home after almost four months of being held captive by the Bosnian Serbs. 1997 - Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal," went on trial in Paris on charges of killing two French investigators and a Lebanese national. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. 1997 - The U.S. Justice Department ordered Microsoft to sell its Internet browser separately from its Windows operating system to prevent it from building a monopoly of Web access programs. 1997 - Denver Pyle received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 1998 - The House Judiciary Committee rejected censure, and approved the final article of impeachment against U.S. President Clinton. The case was submitted to the full House for a verdict. 2000 - The U.S. Supreme Court found that the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election was unconstitutional. U.S. Vice President Al Gore conceded the election to Texas Gov. George W. Bush the next day. 2000 - Timothy McVeigh, over the objections of his lawyers, abandoned his final round of appeals and asked that his execution be set within 120 days. McVeigh was convicted of the April 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Fedal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, that killed 168 and injured 500. 2000 - The Texas Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez to a record breaking 10-year, $252 million contract. The contract amount broke all major league baseball records and all professional sports records. 2001 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would implement minimum federal election standards and provide funding to help states modernize their voting systems. 2001 - Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison for being the leader of a Cuban spy ring. His conviction was based on his role in the infiltration of U.S. military bases and in the deaths of four Cuban-Americans whose planes were shot down five years before. 2001 - In Beverly Hills, CA, actress Winona Ryder was arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue for shoplifting and possessing pharmaceutical drugs without a prescription. The numerous items of clothing and hair accessories were valued at $4,760. 2002 - North Korea announced that it would reactivate a nuclear power plant that U.S. officials believed was being used to develop weapons.
1787 Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 1870 Joseph Rainey took his seat as the first African American in the U.S. House of Representatives. 1913 The Mona Lisa was recovered in Florence after having been stolen two years earlier (August 1911) from the Louvre. 1963 Kenya gained its independence from Britain. 1998 The House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth and final article of impeachment against President Clinton. 2000 The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the presidential election recount in Florida. 2001 Yasir Arafat closed the offices of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/dec12.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
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