ON DECEMBER 1 ...
In 1761 Marie Tussaud, the founder of Madame Tussaud’s museum of wax figures in London, was born in Strasbourg, France.
In 1824 the presidential election was turned over to the House of Representatives when a deadlock developed among John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford and Henry Clay; Adams ended up the winner.
In 1913 the first drive-in automobile service station opened, in Pittsburgh.
In 1919 Lady Astor was sworn in as the first female member of the British Parliament.
In 1921 the Navy flew the first nonrigid dirigible to use helium; the C-7 traveled from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Washington.
In 1934 Sergei Kirov, a collaborator of Josef Stalin, was assassinated in Leningrad, resulting in a massive purge.
In 1935 actor and filmmaker Woody Allen was born Allen Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1942 nationwide gasoline rationing went into effect in the United States.
In 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin concluded their Tehran conference.
In 1955 Rosa Parks, an
African-American seamstress, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. Parks was arrested, sparking a yearlong boycott of the buses by blacks.
In 1958 one of Chicago’s deadliest fires killed 92 children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels School on the West Side.
In 1959 representatives of 12 countries, including the United States, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity.
In 1965 an airlift of refugees from Cuba to the United States began in which thousands of Cubans were allowed to leave their homeland.
In 1969 the U.S. government held its first draft lottery since World War II.
In 1973 David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, died in Tel Aviv; he was 87.
In 1990 British and French workers digging the Channel Tunnel between their countries finally met after knocking out a passage in a service tunnel.
In 1991 Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Soviet Union.
In 1994 the Senate gave final congressional approval to a world trade agreement, passing the 124-nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 76-24. Also in 1994 former television evangelist Jim Bakker spent his first full day of freedom after time in prison, a halfway house and house arrest for bilking followers of his PTL ministry.
In 1997 a 14-year-old boy opened fire on a prayer circle at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, killing three fellow students and wounding five; the shooter is serving a life sentence.
In 1999 an international team of scientists announced it had mapped virtually an entire human chromosome.
In 2000 Vicente Fox was sworn in as president of Mexico, ending 71 years of ruling-party domination.
In 2003 India and Pakistan agreed to restore airline overflight and landing rights by Jan. 1, 2004.