Today’s highlight in history
On Dec. 27, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
On this date In 1831,
naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a round-the-world voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.
In 1945,
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were formally established.
In 1949,
Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act recognizing Indonesia’s sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.
In 1958,
American physicist James Van Allen reported the discovery of a second radiation belt around Earth, in addition to one found earlier in the year.
In 1968,
Apollo 8 and its three astronauts — Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Milwaukee native Jim Lovell — made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.
In 1979,
Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.
In 1985,
American naturalist Dian Fossey, 53, who had studied gorillas in the wild in Rwanda, was found hacked to death.
Ten years ago:
Iranian security forces fired on Tehran protesters, killing at least eight and launching a new wave of arrests.
Five years ago:
North Korea blamed its recent internet outage on the United States and hurled racially charged insults at President Barack Obama over the hacking row involving the movie “The Interview.”
One year ago:
Richard Overton, the nation’s oldest living World War II veteran who was also believed to be the oldest living man in the U.S., died in Texas at the age of 112.