DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Sunday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2021. There are 19 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1870: Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.
1906: President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oscar Straus to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor; Straus became the first Jewish Cabinet member.
1913: Authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the “Mona Lisa,” stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.
1915: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra was born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, New Jersey.
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. Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Nebraska.
1939: Swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks died in Santa Monica, California, at age 56.
1977: The dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” starring John Travolta, premiered in New York.
1985: 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
1995: By three votes, the Senate killed a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against Old Glory.
1997: Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the international terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal,” went on trial in Paris on charges of killing two French investigators and a Lebanese national. (Ramirez was convicted and is serving a life prison sentence.)
2000: George W. Bush became president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election. The Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines. (The Osprey program was revived by the Pentagon in 2005.)
2010: The inflatable roof of the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed following a snowstorm that had dumped 17 inches on the city. (The NFL was forced to shift an already rescheduled game between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants to Detroit’s Ford Field.)
Game show host Bob Barker is 98. Singer Connie Francis is 84. Singer Dionne Warwick is 81. Singer-guitarist Dickey Betts of Allman Brothers is 78. Actor Wings Hauser is 74. Actor Bill Nighy (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) is 72. Actor Duane Chase (“The Sound of Music”) is 71. Country singer La Costa is 71. Gymnast-turnedactor Cathy Rigby is 69. Singer-percussionist Sheila E. is 64. Actor Sheree J. Wilson (“Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Dallas”) is 63. Guitarist Eric Schenkman of Spin Doctors is 58. Bassist Nicholas Dimichino of Nine Days is 54. Actor Jennifer Connelly is 51. Actor Madchen Amick (“Twin Peaks”) is 51. Actor Regina Hall is 51. Actor Mayim Bialikis 46.