On this date
In 1879, Thomas Edison first publicly demonstrated his electric incandescent light in Menlo Park, N.J.
In 1904, New York’s Times Square saw its first New Year’s Eve celebration, with an estimated 200,000 people in attendance.
In 1942, Frank Sinatra opened a singing engagement at New York’s Paramount Theater. In 1951, the Marshall Plan expired after distributing more than $12 billion in foreign aid.
In 1972, Major League baseball player Roberto Clemente, 38, was killed when a plane he’d chartered and was traveling on to bring relief supplies to earthquake-devastated Nicaragua crashed shortly after takeoff from Puerto Rico.
In 1985, singer Rick Nelson, 45, and six other people were killed when fire broke out aboard a DC-3 that was taking the group to a New Year’s Eve performance in Dallas.
In 1991, representatives of the government of El Salvador and rebels reached agreement at the United Nations on a peace accord to end 12 years of civil war.
Ten years ago: The death toll for Americans killed in the Iraq war reached 3,000.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama signed a defense bill into law despite having “serious reservations” about provisions that regulated the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.
One year ago: Belgian authorities announced the arrest of a 10th person in connection with the November 2015 attacks in Paris.