TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 6, the 340th day of 2023. There are 25 days left in the year. On this date in:

Congress moved to Philadelphia from New York.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was ratified as Georgia became the 27th state to endorse it.

A presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as Calvin Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.

America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV3 rose about four feet off a Cape Canaveral launch pad before crashing down and exploding.

A free concert by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, California, was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a Hell’s Angel.

House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew.

Fourteen women were shot to death at the University of Montreal’s school of engineering by a man who then took his own life.

In Venezuela, former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier, was elected president.

President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, defying warnings from the Palestinians and others around the world that he would be destroying hopes for Mideast peace.

The Justice Department said it was ending its investigation into the 1955 lynching of the Black teenager Emmett Till, who was killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman in Mississippi.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff election that ensured Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s term.