TODAY IN HISTORY
1653: Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1773: The Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest tea taxes.
1859: Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the story-writing Brothers Grimm, died in Berlin at age 73.
1905: The entertainment trade publication Variety came out with its first weekly issue.
1907: 16 U.S. Navy battleships, which came to be known as the “Great White Fleet,” set sail on a 14-month round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.
1944: The World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise attack against Allied forces through the Ardennes
Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg (the Allies were eventually able to turn the Germans back).
1950: President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “world conquest by Communist imperialism.” 1960: 134 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over New York City.
1982: Environmental Protection Agency head Anne M. Gorsuch became the first Cabinet-level officer to be cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to submit documents requested by a congressional committee.
1985: At services in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, offered condolences to families of 248 soldiers killed in the crash of a chartered
plane in Newfoundland.
1991: The U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a vote of 111-25.
2000: President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state.
2001: After nine weeks of fighting, Afghan militia leaders claimed control of the last mountain bastion of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida fighters, but bin Laden himself was nowhere to be seen.
One year ago: With the threat of a partial government shutdown looming, the White House dug in on its demand for $5 billion to build a border wall as congressional Democrats stood firm against it.