This day in history
Today is Tuesday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2023. There are 19 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Pettit is 91. Singer Connie Francis is 86. Singer Dionne Warwick is 83. Rock guitarist-musician Dickey Betts is 80. Hall of Fame race car driver Emerson Fittipaldi is 77. Actor Wings Hauser is 76. Actor Bill Nighy is 74. Gymnast-turnedactor Cathy Rigby is 71. Singermusician Sheila E. is 66. Actor Sheree J. Wilson is 65. Tennis Hall of Famer Tracy Austin is 61. Author Sophie Kinsella is 54. Country singer Hank Williams III is 51. Actor Mayim Bialik is 48. Actor Sky Katz is 19.
▶ In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the US Constitution.
▶ In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black lawmaker sworn into the US House of Representatives.
▶ In 1901, three brothers, George, Charles, and Edward Parker, incorporated a game company in their home town of Salem: Parker Brothers.
▶ In 1913, authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the “Mona Lisa,” stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.
▶ In 1915, singer-actor Frank Sinatra was born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, N.J.
▶ In 1917, during World War I, a train carrying some 1,000 French troops from the Italian front derailed while descending a steep hill in Modane; at least half of the soldiers were killed in France’s greatest rail disaster.
▶ In 1977, the dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” starring John Travolta, premiered in New York.
▶ In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
▶ In 1995, by three votes, the Senate killed a proposed constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against Old Glory.
▶ In 2000, George W. Bush became president-elect as a divided US Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election.
▶ In 2015, nearly 200 nations meeting in Paris adopted the first global pact to fight climate change, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that didn’t do so.
▶ In 2018, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s one-time fixer, was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes that included arranging the payment of hush money to conceal Trump’s alleged sexual affairs.
▶ In 2019, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson led his Conservative Party to a landslide victory in a general election that was dominated by Brexit.
▶ In 2020, thousands of supporters of President Trump gathered in Washington for rallies to back his desperate efforts to subvert the election that he lost to Joe Biden.