This Day in History – December 7, 2011

0043 -BC- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman writer, gets his head & right hand chopped off by Mark Antony’s soldiers 1787 Delaware becomes 1st state to ratify constitution 1808 James Madison elected US President,George Clinton Vice-President 1836 Martin Van Buren elected 8th President 1842 New York Philharmonic’s 1st concert 1862 Battle of Hartsville TN 1862 Battle of Prairie Grove AR 1868 Jesse James gang robs bank in Gallatin MO, kills 1 1876 New York Mutuals & Philadelphia A’s expelled from National League for not completing schedule 1877 Thomas A Edison demonstrates the gramophone 1909 Leo Baekeland, Yonkers NY, patents 1st thermosetting plastic (Bakelite) 1912 Bust of Queen Nefertete found in El-Amarna, Egypt 1917 US becomes 13th country to declare war on Austria during World War I 1926 Gas refrigerator patented 1932 1st gyro-stabilized vessel to cross the Atlantic arrives in New York 1934 Wiley Post discovers the jet stream 1937 Dutch Minister Romme proclaims married women are forbidden to work 1937 Red Sox acquire the contract of 19-year-old Ted Williams 1939 Lou Gehrig, 36, is elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame 1941 Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (a date that will live in infamy) 1941 1st Japanese submarine sunk by a US ship (USS Ward) 1945 Microwave oven patented 1962 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site 1967 Otis Redding records “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” 1968 Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather borrowed in 1823 to the University of Cincinatti; the $22,646 fine went unpaid 1972 Apollo 17 (US), final manned lunar landing mission (last of Apollo Moon series), launched 1981 Spain becomes a member of NATO 1985 Atlantis returns to Kennedy Space Center via Kelly AFB 1987 43 die in Pacific Southwest Airline crash in California (man shot pilots) 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in the US for a summit meeting 1988 Yasser Arafat recognizes existence of Israel 1988 Rangers sign free-agent pitcher Nolan Ryan to a one-year contract 1994 Radio personality Howard Stern talks a man out of attempting suicide 1995 NBA settles strike of referees, referees to return on December 12 1995 US space probe Galileo begins orbiting Jupiter 1996 Space Shuttle STS 80 (Columbia 21), lands 1999 The Recording Industry Association of America files a lawsuit against the Napster file-sharing client alleging copyright infringement. 2005 Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of U.S. federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.]]]]> ]]>