Today’s birthdays

Today’s highlight

On Dec. 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manned powered-airplane flights near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.

On this date

1777: France recognized American independence.

1944: The U.S. War Department announced it was ending its policy of excluding people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.

1957: The United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

1979: Arthur Mcduffie, a Black insurance executive, was beaten by police after leading them on a chase with his motorcycle in Miami. Mcduffie died in a hospital four days later.

1992: President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in separate ceremonies.

2011: North Korean leader

Kim Jong Il died after more than a decade of iron rule; he was 69, according to official records, but some reports indicated he was 70.

2012: Newtown, Connecticut, began laying its dead to rest, holding funerals for two 6-year-old boys, the first of the 20children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

2014: The United States and Cuba restored diplomatic relations, sweeping away one of the last vestiges of the Cold War.

2020: A government advisory panel endorsed a second COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for the shot from Moderna and the National Institutes of Health to be added to the U.S. vaccination campaign.

Pope Francis is 87. Actor Ernie Hudson is 78. Comedian-actor Eugene Levy is 77. Rock singer Paul Rodgers is 74. Actor Bill Pullman is 70. Rock musician Mike Mills (R.E.M.) is 65. Country musician Duane Propes is 57. Pop-rock musician Eddie Fisher (Onerepublic) is 50. Actor Milla Jovovich is 48. Actor Emma Bell is 37.