This Week in History

DECEMBER 5

Dan Guarino was born.

Mariela Kohler was born.

1791 – Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna, Austria, at age 35.

1933 – The 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing prohibition, was ratified.

DECEMBER 6

Tori Dresch was born.

Sophia Skeans was born.

Christine Harkins was born.

1884 – Construction of the Washington Monument was completed.

1973 – Gerald Ford was sworn in as vice president, replacing Spiro T. Agnew.

DECEMBER 7

Jessica Farrell was born.

1941 – The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

2002 – Iraq formally declared to the UN that it had no weapons of mass destruction.

DECEMBER 8

Mary Heslin Reed was born.

Rachel Bernstein was born.

1941 – The U.S. entered World War II

1980 – John Lennon, former member of the Beatles, was shot and killed in New York City by a deranged fan.

DECEMBER 9 

Mike Bottiglieri was born.

1965 – “A Charlie Brown Christmas” premiered.

1990 – Lech Walesa was elected president of Poland.

DECEMBER 10

Erin Halligan Farrow was born.

Laura Jean Nelson was born.

1817 – Mississippi became the 20th state in the United States.

2004 – A U.S. passenger jet landed in Vietnam, the first one to do so since the Vietnam War ended nearly three decades earlier.

DECEMBER 11

Ellen Sullivan Sayles was born.

Jomar Legaspi was born.

1936 – King Edward VIII abdicated the throne of Britain for the woman he loved, Mrs. Wallis Simpson.

1941 – Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.