TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, DEC. 13, the 347th day of 2017. There are 18 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 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.)
In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted present-day New Zealand.
In 1769, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire received its charter.
In 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.
In 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.
In 1962, the United States launched Relay 1, a communications satellite that retransmitted television, telephone and digital signals.
In 1977, 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.
In 1994, an American Eagle commuter plane crashed short of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, killing 15 of the 20 people on board.
In 1996, the U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to become the world body’s seventh secretary-general.
In 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.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz is 97. Actor-comedian Dick Van Dyke is 92. Actor Christopher Plummer is 88. Country singer Buck White is 87. Music/film producer Lou Adler is 84. Singer John Davidson is 76. Actress Kathy Garver (TV: “Family Affair”) is 72. Singer Ted Nugent, rock musician Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and country musician Ron Getman are 69. Actor Robert Lindsay and country singer-musician Randy Owen are 68. Actress Wendie Malick and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are 67. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is 64. Country singer John Anderson and singer-songwriter Steve Forbert are 63. Singer-actor Morris Day is 61. Actor Steve Buscemi is 60. Actor Johnny Whitaker (TV: “Family Affair”) is 58. Rock musician John Munson (Semisonic; Twilight Hours) is 55. Actress-reality TV star NeNe Leakes is 51. Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx is 50. Actor Bart Johnson is 47. Actor Jeffrey Pierce is 46. TV personality Debbie Matenopoulos is 43. Rock singer-musician Thomas Delonge and actor James Kyson Lee are 42. Actor Michael Socha and Neo-soul musician Wesley Watkins (Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats) are 30. Actor Marcel Spears (TV: “The Mayor”) is 29. Singer Taylor Swift is 28. Actress Maisy Stella is 14.