TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SUNDAY, DEC. 4, the 339th day of 2016. There are 27 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1816, James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States.
In 1619, a group of settlers from Bristol, England, arrived at Berkeley Hundred in present-day Charles City County, Va., where they held a service thanking God for their safe arrival.
In 1783, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his Continental Army officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York.
In 1816, Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Otello,” an adaptation of the Shakespeare play that preceded Giuseppe Verdi’s “Otello” by 71 years, premiered in Naples, Italy.
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson left Washington on a trip to France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.
In 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gathered for the first and only time for a jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.
In 1965, the United States launched Gemini 7 with Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Borman and Navy Cmdr. James A. Lovell aboard on a two-week mission. (While Gemini 7 was in orbit, its sister ship, Gemini 6A, was launched on Dec. 15 on a one-day mission; the two spacecraft were able to rendezvous within a foot of each other.)
In 1984, a five-day hijack drama began as four armed men seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger Charles Hegna.
In 1986, both houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.
In 1996, the Mars Pathfinder lifted off from Cape Canaveral and began speeding toward the red planet on a 310 million-mile odyssey. (It arrived on Mars in July 1997.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Game show host Wink Martindale is 83. Actress Gemma Jones and rock musician Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) are 74. Musician Terry Woods (The Pogues) is 69. Actor Jeff Bridges is 67. Rock musician Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd; the Rossington Collins Band) is 65. Rock musician Bob Griffin (The BoDeans) is 57. Rock singer Vinnie Dombroski (Sponge) is 54. Actress Marisa Tomei is 52. Actor-comedian Fred Armisen is
50. Rapper Jay-Z is 47. Actress-model Tyra Banks is 43. Actress Lindsay Felton is 32. Actor Orlando Brown is
29.