Chicago Daily Tribune

ON DECEMBER 2 ...

In 1804 Napoleon was crowned emperor of France.

In 1823 President James Monroe outlined his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1859 militant abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harper’s Ferry the previous October.

In 1939 New York’s La Guardia Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago landed at one minute past midnight.

In 1942 a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated for the first time, at the University of Chicago.

In 1946 fashion designer Gianni Versace was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy.

In 1954 the Senate voted to condemn Wisconsin Republican Joseph McCarthy for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”

In 1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist who would lead Cuba to communism.

In 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency began operating under director William Ruckelshaus.

In 1982 in the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implanted a permanent artificial heart in the chest of retired dentist Dr. Barney Clark, who lived 112 days with the device.

In 1993 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot to death by security forces in Medellin.

In 1999, in Northern Ireland, a power-sharing Cabinet of Protestants and Catholics sat down together for the first time.

In 2001 in one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history, Enron filed for Chapter 11 protection.

In 2003 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that after knocking, police do not have to wait longer than 20 seconds before breaking into the home of a drug suspect. In 2014 the Chicago City Council overwhelmingly approved raising the city’s minimum wage to $13 an hour from $8.25 by mid-2019. Also in 2014 the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed as he fired two ministers who led parties in his ruling coalition, ending a protracted political crisis.

In 2015 a couple loyal to Islamic State opened fire at a holiday banquet for public employees in San Bernardino, Calif., killing 14 people and wounding 21 others before dying in a shootout with police.

In 2016 thirty-six people died when fire erupted in an illegally converted warehouse in Oakland, Calif., during a dance party.