DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Saturday, Dec. 11, the 345th day of 2021. There are 20 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1816: Indiana became the 19th state.
1910: French inventor Georges Claude publicly displayed his first neon lamp, consisting of two 38-foot-long tubes, at the Paris Expo.
1936: Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson; his brother, Prince Albert, became King George VI.
1941: Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
1946: The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established.
1972: Apollo 17’s lunar module landed on the moon with astronauts Eugene
Cernan and Harrison Schmitt aboard; they became the last two men to date to step onto the lunar surface.
1980: President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental “superfund” to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps. “Magnum P.I.,” starring Tom Selleck, premiered on CBS.
1998: Majority Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee pushed through three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, over Democratic objections.
2001: In the first criminal indictment stemming from 9/11, federal prosecutors charged Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, with conspiring to murder thousands in the suicide hijackings. (Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2005 and was sentenced to life in prison.)
2002: A congressional report found that intelligence agencies that were supposed to protect Americans from the Sept. 11 hijackers failed to do so because they were poorly organized, poorly equipped and slow to pursue clues that might have prevented the attacks.
2008: Former Nasdaq chairman Bernie Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that wiped out the life savings of thousands of people and wrecked charities. (Madoff died in April 2021 while serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.)
2018: A Virginia jury called for a sentence of life in prison plus 419 years for the man who killed a woman when he rammed his car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (James Alex Fields Jr. received that sentence in July, 2019.)
Actor Rita Moreno is 90. Singer David Gates of Bread is 81. Actor Donna Mills (“Knots Landing”) is 81. Singer Brenda Lee is 77. Singer Paul Beasley of The Blind Boys of Alabama is 77. Actor Lynda Day George (TV’S “Mission: Impossible”) is 77. Actor Teri Garr is 74. Actor Bess Armstrong is 68. Singer
Jermaine Jackson is 67. Bassist Mike Mesaros of The Smithereens is 64. Bassist Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue is 63. Actor Ben Browder (“Stargate SG-1”) is 59. Singer-bassist
Justin Currie of Del Amitri is 57. Bassist
David Schools of Widespread Panic is 57. Actor Gary Dourdan (“C.S.I.”) is 55. Actor-comedian Mo’nique is 54. Actor
Max Martini (“The Unit”) is 52. Rapperactor Yasiin Be (Mos Def) is 48.