DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Tuesday, Dec. 21, the 355th day of 2021. There are 10 days left in the year. Winter arrives at 10:59 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
On this date in:
1620: Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower went ashore for the first time at presentday Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1864: During the Civil War, Union forces led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman concluded their “March to the Sea” as they captured Savannah, Georgia.
1891: The first basketball game, devised by James Naismith, is believed to have been played at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. (The final score of this experimental game: 1-0.)
1945: U.S. Army Gen. George S. Patton, 60, died in Heidelberg, Germany, 12 days after being seriously injured in a car accident.
1968: Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.
1969: Vince Lombardi coached his last football game as his team, the Washington Redskins, lost to the Dallas Cowboys, 20-10.
1976: The Liberian-registered tanker Argo Merchant broke apart near Nantucket Island off Massachusetts almost a week after running aground, spilling 7.5 million gallons of oil into the North Atlantic.
1988: 270 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, sending wreckage crashing to the ground.
1991: Eleven of the 12 former Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the death of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
1995: The city of Bethlehem passed from Israeli to Palestinian control.
2012: The National Rifle Association said guns and police officers were needed in all American schools to stop the next killer “waiting in the wings,” taking a no-retreat stance in the face of growing calls for gun control after the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings that claimed the lives of 26 children and school staff.
2015: The nation’s three-decade-old ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men was formally lifted, but major restrictions continued to limit who could give blood in the U.S.
Ten years ago: Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was selected the 2011 AP Male Athlete of the Year. Baylor’s Robert Griffin III was selected The Associated Press college football player of the year.
Talk show host Phil Donahue is 86. Actor Jane Fonda is 84. Actor Josh Mostel (“Billy Madison,” “Big Daddy”) is 75. Actor Samuel L. Jackson is 73. Singer Nick Gilder is 71. Actor Jane Kaczmarek (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 66. Country singer Lee Roy Parnell is 65. Former child actor Lisa Gerritsen (“Phyllis,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”) is 64. Actor-comedian Ray Romano
(“Everybody Loves Raymond”) is 64. Actor-comedian Andy Dick is 56. Actor Michelle Hurd (“Law and Order: Special Victims Unit’) is 55. Actor Kiefer Sutherland is 55. Actor Karri Turner (“JAG”) is 55. Country singer Brad Warren of The Warren Brothers is 53. Actor Kaitlyn Dever
(“Last Man Standing”) is 25.