Category: Today

On December 15, 1791, the United States’ Bill of Rights became constitutional law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

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On December 15 in 1933, the Twenty-​first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially became effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that had, by enabling the Volstead Act, prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for any other than medical and industrial uses.

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December 15 birthdays include that of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad, 1861, first Head of State of independent Finland, serving in this capacity first as leader of the Senate and then as Protector, or Regent. In 1930 he became Prime Minister, and in 1931 was elected President, leaving office in 1937.

During the Civil War of 1918, his anti-​socialist refugee government, Valkoiset, or “Whites,” opposed the “Reds,” a Social Democrat Party faction, for control of the government as it transitioned from Russian rule as a Grand Duchy, to independent status.

He died in 1944.

On December 14, 1918, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounced the Finnish throne.

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In 1939, on this date, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland and starting the Winter War.

On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state of these United States.

On December 13, 1577, Sir Francis Drake set sail from Plymouth, England, on his round-​the-​world voyage.

In 1623 on this date, the Plymouth Colony in North America established a system of trial by 12-​men jury.

On December 13, 1972, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt began the third and final extra-​vehicular activity (EVA) or “Moonwalk” of Apollo 17. To this date in 2024 they remain the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

On December 12, 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

On the same date in 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first former slave elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives. His father had emancipated him as a child, and he had worked as a barber before the Civil War.

On December 10, 1884, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published. This novel, narrated in the first person by the title character, is a dark comedy of the antebellum South and slavery, and has been considered by more than one literary critic as the “Great American Novel.”

On this date in 1901, the first Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded — to economist Frédéric Passy (pictured above), co-​founder of the Inter-​Parliamentary Union; and to Henry Dunant the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Passy was an admirer of Richard Cobden and an active member in the French Liberal School of Political Economy that developed in the tradition of J. B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, and Frédéric Bastiat. His published works include Leçons d’économie politique (1860 – 61); La Démocratie et l’Instruction (1864); L’Histoire du Travail (1873); Malthus et sa Doctrine (1868); and La Solidarité du Travail et du Capital (1875).

On December 9, 1958, the John Birch Society was founded in the United States. December 9 also marks the birthdays of

• Poet and anti-​censorship advocate John Milton (1608), author of Paradise Lost (1667), the masterpiece of blank verse narrative, and a classic prose defense of free speech and the press, Areopagitica (1644).
• Russian prince and anarchist theoretician Peter Kropotkin (1842), author of Mutual Aid and other books and pamphlets. 
• Filmmaker John Malkovich (1953), who directed The Dancer Upstairs (2002) and starred in the odd eponymous film Being John Malkovich (1999).