TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Dec. 11, 1972

Apollo 17’s lunar module landed on the moon with astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt aboard; they became the last two men to date to step onto the lunar surface.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1910

French inventor Georges Claude publicly displayed his first neon lamp, consisting of two 38-foot-long tubes, at the Paris Expo.

1936

Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson; his brother, Prince Albert, became King George VI.

1937

Italy withdrew from the League of Nations.

1941

Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.

1961

A U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon _ the first direct American military support for South Vietnam’s battle against Communist guerrillas.

1980

President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental “superfund” to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps. “Magnum P.I.,” starring Tom Selleck, premiered on CBS.

1991

A jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, acquitted William Kennedy Smith of sexual assault and battery, rejecting the allegations of Patricia Bowman.

1997

More than 150 countries agreed at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth’s greenhouse gases.

2001

In the first criminal indictment stemming from 9⁄11, federal prosecutors charged Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, with conspiring to murder thousands in the suicide hijackings.