TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Dec. 13, 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.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1862

Union forces led by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside launched futile attacks against entrenched Confederate soldiers during the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg; the soundly defeated Northern troops withdrew two days later.

1918

President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

1928

George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York.

1944

During World War II, the light cruiser USS Nashville was badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack off Negros Island in the Philippines that claimed 133 lives.

1977

An Air Indiana Flight 216, a DC-3 carrying the University of Evansville basketball team on a flight to Nashville, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 29 people on board.

1978

The Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which went into circulation the following July.

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.

2002

Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal.

2008

The White House weighed its options for preventing a collapse of the troubled U.S. auto industry. Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy.