DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Monday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2021. There are 18 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1928: George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York.
1937: The Chinese city of Nanjing fell to Japanese forces during the Sino-japanese War; what followed was a massacre of war prisoners, soldiers and citizens. (China maintains that up to 300,000 people were killed; Japanese nationalists say the death toll was far lower, and some maintain the massacre never happened.)
1978: The Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which went into circulation the following July.
1981: Authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity
labor movement. (Martial law formally ended in 1983.)
1993: The space shuttle Endeavour returned from its mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
2000: Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency a day after the U.S. Supreme Court shut down further recounts of disputed ballots in Florida; Democrat Al Gore conceded, delivering a call for national unity.
2001: The Pentagon publicly released a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-qaida leader said the deaths and destruction achieved by the September 11 attacks exceeded his “most optimistic” expectations.
2002: President George W. Bush announced he would take the smallpox vaccine along with U.S. military forces, but was not recommending the potentially risky inoculation for most Americans.
2003: Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.
2007: Major League Baseball’s Mitchell Report was released, identifying 85 names to differing degrees in connection with the alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs.
2014: Thousands of protesters marched in New York, Washington and other U.S. cities to call attention to the killing of unarmed Black men by white police officers who faced no criminal charges.
2019: The House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of abuse of power in his dealings with Ukraine and obstruction of Congress in the investigation that followed.
Actor Dick Van Dyke is 96. Actorsinger John Davidson is 80. Singer Ted Nugent is 73. Guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter of The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan is 73. Guitarist Ron Getman of The Tractors is 73. Country singer-guitarist Randy Owen of Alabama is 72. Actor Wendie Malick is 71. Country singer John Anderson is 67. Singer
Morris Day of The Time is 65. Actor Steve Buscemi is 64. Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx is 54. Actor Kimee Balmilero (“Hawaii Five-0”) is 42. Singer Amy Lee of Evanescence is 40. Trumpeter
Wesley Watkins of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats is 34. Actor Marcel Spears (“The Mayor”) is 33. Singer Taylor Swift is 32. Actor Maisy Stella (“Nashville”) is 18.