Today in history

On Dec. 19, 1732,

Benjamin Franklin began publishing “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

In 1776

Thomas Paine published his first “American Crisis” essay.

In 1777

Gen. George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pa., to camp for the winter.

In 1842

the United States recognized the independence of Hawaii.

In 1843

“A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens, was first published in England.

In 1871

Albert Jones, of New York City, patented corrugated paper.

In 1903

the Williamsburg Bridge opened in New York City, linking Manhattan and Brooklyn.

In 1907

239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pa.

In 1915

French singer Edith Piaf was born in Paris.

In 1932

the British Broadcasting Corp. began transmitting overseas with its Empire Service to Australia.

In 1941

Adolf Hitler dismissed his chief of staff and took personal command of the German army.

In 1946

war broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.

In 1950

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was named commander of the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In 1957

Meredith Willson’s musical play “The Music Man” opened on Broadway.

In 1969

the United States eased a decades-old trade embargo against China.

In 1972

Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, winding up the Apollo program of manned lunar landings.

In 1974

Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States.

In 1975

Nellie Tayloe Ross, the nation’s first female governor and a former director of the U.S. Mint, died in Washington; she was 101. (Ross had succeeded her husband as governor of Wyoming in 1925, following his death.) Also in 1975 John Paul Stevens was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1984

Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.

In 1985

in Minneapolis, Mary Lund became the first woman to receive a Jarvik VII artificial heart. (Lund received a human heart transplant 45 days later; she died in October 1986.)

In 1986

the Soviet Union announced it had freed dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile and pardoned his wife, Yelena Bonner.

In 1990

Iraq urged its people to stockpile oil to avoid shortages should war break out, and Saddam Hussein declared he was “ready to crush any attack.”

In 1991

the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International agreed to settle federal racketeering charges by forfeiting all its U.S. assets.

In 1994

CNN publicly acknowledged it had wrongfully disobeyed a judge’s order in broadcasting former Panamanian military ruler Manuel Noriega’s jailhouse telephone conversations.

In 1996

the television industry unveiled a plan to rate programs using tags such as “TV-G,” “TV-Y” and “TV-M.” Also in 1996 Oakland’s school board voted to recognize black English, also known as “Ebonics,” in a decision that set off a firestorm of controversy. (The board later modified its stance.) Also in 1996 actor Marcello Mastroianni died in Paris; he was 72.

In 1997

a SilkAir Boeing 737-300 plunged from the sky, crashing into an Indonesian river and killing all 104 people on board. Also

in 1997 James Cameron’s epic “Titanic,” the highest grossing film ever made, opened in American movie theaters.

In 1998

President Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House for perjury and obstruction of justice. (He was later acquitted by the Senate.) Also in 1998 two days after his confession of marital infidelity, Bob Livingston told the House he wouldn’t serve as its next speaker.

Also in 1998 President Bill Clinton halted air-strikes against Iraq after a fourth day of attacks.

In 2000

the U.N. Security Council voted to impose broad sanctions on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unless they closed terrorist training camps and surrender U.S. Embassy bombing suspect Osama bin Laden.

In 2001

the fires that had burned beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City for the previous three months were declared extinguished except for a few scattered hot spots.

In 2002

after a prosecutor cited new DNA evidence, a judge in New York threw out the convictions of five young men in a 1989 attack on a Central Park jogger who had been raped and left for dead.

In 2003

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi agreed to halt his nation’s drive to develop nuclear and chemical weapons.

In 2004

in Iraq, car bombs tore through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala’s main bus station, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 120 in the two Shiite holy cities.