On this date
In 1804,
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French.
In 1859,
militant abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harpers Ferry the previous October.
In 1927,
Ford Motor Co. unveiled its Model A automobile, which replaced its Model T.
In 1954,
the U.S. Senate passed, 67-22, a resolution condemning Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., saying he had “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
In 1970,
the newly created Environmental Protection Agency opened its doors under its first director, William D. Ruckelshaus.
In 1982,
in the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implanted a permanent artificial heart in the chest of retired dentist Barney Clark, who lived 112 days with the device.
In 2015,
a couple loyal to Islamic State opened fire at a holiday banquet for public employees in San Bernardino, Calif., killing 14 people and wounding 21 others before dying in a shootout with police.
Ten years ago:
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party swept 70% of the seats for a new parliament in a vote whose fairness was called into question by European election monitors.
Five years ago:
Hundreds of concrete slabs, each weighing more than a ton, fell from the roof of a highway tunnel west of Tokyo, crushing vehicles below and killing nine people.
One year ago:
Thirty-six people died when fire erupted in an illegally converted warehouse in Oakland, Calif., during a dance party. (Two men have pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter.)