TODAY’S HISTORY

1868: President Andrew Johnson unconditionally pardoned all those who had participated in the Southern rebellion that led to the Civil War.

1974: 25-year-old Marshall Fields crashed his car through a White House gate and threatened to detonate a bomb; he surrendered after a four-hour standoff.

1990: Tim BernersLee launched the first World Wide Web server. 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. The Soviet Union was officially dissolved the next day.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Sir Isaac Newton (16421727), scientist; Clara Barton (18211912), American Red Cross founder; Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), actor; Cab Calloway (19071994), bandleader/singer; Anwar Sadat (1918-1981), Egyptian president; Rod Serling (1924-1975), screenwriter/ producer; Jimmy Buffett (1946-), singer-songwriter; Sissy Spacek (1949-), actress; Karl Rove (1950-), political strategist; Annie Lennox (1954-), singer; Rickey Henderson (1958-), baseball player; Justin Trudeau (1971-), prime minister of Canada.

TODAY’S FACT: Americans spent $138.7 billion shopping online during the holiday season in 2019.

TODAY’S SPORTS: In 1989, former New York Yankees player and manager Billy Martin died in an automobile accident.

TODAY’S QUOTE: “Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.” — Rod Serling

TODAY’S NUMBER: 50 million — units sold of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” making it the best-selling single of all time, according to Guinness World Records. The song debuted on Crosby’s weekly radio program, “The Kraft Music Hall,” on this day in 1941.