TO D AY I N H I S TO R Y Today’s highlight in history

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 1, the 336th day of 2020.

On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a White man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus; the incident sparked a yearlong boycott of the buses by Blacks.

On this date

In 1824, the presidential election was turned over to the U.S. House of Representatives when a deadlock developed between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. (Adams ended up the winner.)

In 1860, the Charles Dickens novel “Great Expectations” was first published in weekly serial form.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sent his Second Annual Message to Congress, in which he called for the abolition of slavery, and went on to say, “Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”

In 1941, Japan’s Emperor

Hirohito approved waging war against the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands after his government rejected U.S. demands in the Hull Note.

In 1942, nationwide gasoline rationing went into effect in the U.S.; the goal was not so much to save on gas, but to conserve rubber (as in tires) that was desperately needed for the war effort.

In 1965, an airlift of refugees from Cuba to the U.S. began in which thousands of Cubans were allowed to leave their homeland.

In 1969, the U.S. government held its first draft lottery since World War II.

In 1990, British and French workers digging the Channel Tunnel between their countries finally met after knocking out a passage in a service tunnel.