TODAY IN WORLD HISTORY
Today is Saturday, Dec. 10, the 345th day of 2016. There are 21 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History On Dec. 10, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to mediate an end to the Russo Japanese War.
On this date
• In 1520, Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant, or face excommunication.
• In 1817, Mississippi was admitted as the 20th state of the Union.
• In 1931, Jane Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; the co-recipient was Nicholas Murray Butler.
• In 1950, Ralph J. Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.
• In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. received his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, saying he accepted it “with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.”
• In 1967, singer Otis Redding, 26, and six others were killed when their plane crashed into Wisconsin’s Lake Monona.
• In 1972, baseball’s American League adopted the designated hitter rule on an experimental basis for three years.
• In 1984, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize.
• In 1986, human rights advocate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
• In 1994, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres (shee-MOHN’ PEHR’-ehs) and Yitzhak Rabin (YIT’-sahk rahBEEN’) received the Nobel Peace Prize, pledging to pursue their mission of healing the anguished Middle East.
On Dec. 11
• In 1844, the first experimental use of an inhaled anesthetic in dentistry took place as Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, Connecticut, under the influence of nitrous oxide, had a colleague extract one of his teeth.
• In 1936, Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson; his brother, Prince Albert, became King George VI.
• In 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
• In 1961, a U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon — the first direct American military support for South Vietnam’s battle against Communist guerrillas.
• In 1972, Apollo 17’s lunar module landed on the moon with astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt aboard; during three extravehicular activities (EVAs), they became the last two men to date to step onto the lunar surface.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental “superfund” to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps.
• In 1997, more than 150 countries agreed at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth’s greenhouse gases.
On Dec. 12
• In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
• In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.
• In 1917, Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Nebraska.
• In 1925, the first motel — the Motel Inn — opened in San Luis Obispo, California.
• In 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China’s Yangtze River. (Japan apologized, and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)
• In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
• In 2000, George W. Bush became president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election.