On Dec. 20, 1946, the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, was first released in New York City. In its initial run, the film did not make a profit. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, though it did not win one. Today, the film is considered a classic and watched around the world at Christmas time.
On Dec. 19, 1776, Thomas Paine published the first in a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled “The American Crisis.” Paine’s popular pamphlet, “Common Sense,” released in January of ’76, called for the separation from Britain accomplished that July through the Declaration of Independence.
On Dec. 19, 1777, George Washington’s Continental Army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
One year ago, on Dec. 18, 2010, protests broke out in Tunisia following Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation death in protest of police corruption and ill treatment. This began what came to be known as the Arab Spring, protests throughout the Arab world and the toppling of regimes in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
On Dec. 18, 1620, the British ship Mayflower docked at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its passengers prepared to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony.
On Dec. 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first national day of thanksgiving, commemorating the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777.
On Dec 17, 1777, France officially recognized the United States of America as an independent nation. News of the Continental Army’s victory against the British at Saratoga in October reached France in early December, giving Benjamin Franklin new leverage in rallying French support for the American rebels.
On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. The biplane stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. The Wright Brothers received no federal funding.
On Dec. 17, 1991, after a meeting between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, a Yeltsin spokesman announced that the Soviet Union would officially cease to exist by New Year’s Eve.
On Dec. 16, 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British ships moored in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. Now known as the “Boston Tea Party,” the midnight raid was a protest against the Tea Act of 1773, a bill enacted by the British parliament to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.
On Dec. 15, 1791, Virginia’s ratification made the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the law of the land. Anti-Federalists, such as Patrick Henry, had pushed for the Bill of Rights to protect from encroachment on the rights of the people and the states from a federal government they believed the Constitution made too powerful.
On Dec. 14, 1903, the Wright brothers made their first attempt to fly at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
On Dec. 14, 1825, Russian liberals rise up against Tsar Nicholas I in the Decembrist Revolt in St. Petersburg and are put down.
On Dec. 14, 1799, George Washington, the first president of the United States and the father of his country, passed away at his home at Mount Vernon.
On Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese armed forces entered Nanking, the capital of China, and General Matsui Iwane ordered that the city of Nanking be destroyed. Much of the city was burned, and Japanese troops launched a campaign of atrocities against civilians in what became known as the “Rape of Nanking.” The Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 male “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process. After the end of World War II, Matsui was found guilty of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and executed.
On Dec. 12, 1745, John Jay was born. He later became the first Chief Justice of the United States.
On Dec. 12, 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, five days after Delaware became the first.
On Dec. 11, 1918, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in Stavropol Krai, Russia. His books The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich helped raise global awareness of the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed.