On December 2, 1823, U.S. President James Monroe delivered a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts. The policy became known as the Monroe Doctrine.
In 1930 on this date, Gary Becker was born. An American economist, in 1992 he was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. His work on human capital, population theory, the theory of consumption, and much else put him at the top of the Chicago School in Economics.