TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Dec. 8, 1941

The United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Imperial Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1854

Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment of her own conception.

1863

President Abraham Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction for the South.

1972

A United Airlines Boeing 737 crashed while attempting to land at Chicago-Midway Airport, killing 43 of the 61 people on board, as well as two people on the ground; among the dead were Dorothy Hunt, wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, U.S. Rep. George W. Collins, D-Ill., and CBS News correspondent Michele Clark.

1980

Rock star John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by an apparently deranged fan.

1987

President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty at the White House calling for destruction of intermediaterange nuclear missiles.

1992

Americans got to see live television coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia as Operation Restore Hope began.

1998

Struggling to stave off impeachment, President Bill Clinton’s defenders forcefully pleaded his case before the House Judiciary Committee. The Supreme Court ruled that police cannot search people and their cars after merely ticketing them for routine traffic violations.

2013

Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, toppling the statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.