Today in history 12/5/2020-12/6/2020

12/5/2020:

Today in history, Phi Beta Kappa is organized as the first American college Greek letter-fraternity, at William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va. in 1776.

Today in history, In the U.S. Congress, petitions and bills calling for the abolition of slavery are introduced in 1861.

Today in history, The 21st Amendment ends Prohibition in the United States, which had begun 13 years earlier in 1933.

Today in history, A bus boycott begins under the leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.

12/6/2020:

Today in history, Union General George G. Meade leads a foraging expedition to Gunnell’s farm near Dranesville, Virginia in 1861.

Today in history, The 13th Amendment is ratified, abolishing slavery in 1865.

Today in history, Thomas A. Edison makes the first sound recording when he recites “Mary had a Little Lamb” into his phonograph machine in 1877.

Today in history, Florida’s Everglades National Park is established in 1947.

Today in history 12/3/2020-12/4/2020

12/3/2020:

Today in history, France cedes to Spain all lands west of the Mississippi–the territory known as Upper Louisiana in 1762.

Today in history, Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney establish the North Star, and anti-slavery paper in 1847.

Today in history, The Chinese close in on Pyongyang, Korea, and UN forces withdraw southward in 1950.

Today in history, Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta in 1989.

12/3/2020:

Today in history, The U.S. Senate, voting 36 to 0, expels Senator John C. Brekinridge of Kentucky because of his joining the Confederate Army in 1861.

Today in history, Operation Taifun (Typhoon), which was launched by the German armies on October 2, 1941, as a prelude to taking Moscow, is halted because of freezing temperatures and lack of serviceable aircraft.

Today in history, Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire premieres on Broadway starring Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy in 1947.

Today in history, The last American hostages held in Lebanon are released in 1991.

Today in history 12/1/2020-12/2/2020

12/1/2020:

Today in history, The U.S. gunboat Penguin seizes the Confederate blockade runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000 in 1861.

Today in history, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz. in 1881.

Today in history, National gasoline rationing goes into effect in the United States in 1942.

Today in history, Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, defying the South’s segregationist laws in 1955.

12/2/2020:

Today in history, President James Monroe proclaims in 1823 the principles known as the Monroe Doctrine, “that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers.”

Today in history, People wait in mile-long lines to hear Charles Dickens give his first reading in New York City in 1867.

Today in history, General George S. Patton’s troops enter the Saar Valley and break through the Siegfried line in 1944.

Today in history, NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavor on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Today in history 11/29/2020-11/30/2020

11/29/2020:

Today in history, Major Roger Rogers takes possession of Detroit on behalf of Britain in 1760.

Today in history, The Battle of Fort Sanders, Knoxville, Tenn., ends with a Confederate withdrawal in 1863.

Today in history, Commander Richard Byrd makes the first flight over the South Pole in 1929.

Today in history, The popular children’s television show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, premieres in 1948.

11/30/2020:

Today in history, The British sign a preliminary agreement in Paris, recognizing American independence in 1782.

Today in history, Oscar Wilde dies in a Paris hotel room after saying of the room’s wallpaper: “One of us had to go” in 1900.

Today in history, Russian forces take Danzig in Poland and invade Austria in 1945.

Today in history, Thriller, Michael Jackson’s second solo album, released in 1982; the album, produced by Quincy Jones, became the best-selling album in history.

Today in history 11/27/2020-11/28/2020

11/27/2020:

Today in history, Octavian, Antony and Lepidus form the triumvirate of Rome in 0043.

Today in history, The French nobility, led by Olivier de Clisson, crush the Flemish rebels at Flanders in 1382.

Today in history, One of the two bridges being used by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army across the Beresina River in Russia collapses during a Russian artillery barrage in 1812.

Today in history, Hubble Space Telescope discovers a hydrogen atmosphere on planet Osiris, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet in 2001.

11/28/2020:

Today in history, Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan, having discovered a strait at the tip of South America, enters the Pacific in 1520.

Today in history, The Confederate Congress admits Missouri to the Confederacy, although Missouri has not yet seceded from the Union in 1861.

Today in history, Lady Astor is elected the first woman in Parliament in 1919.

Today in history, Sir Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt meet at Tehran, Iran, to hammer out war aims in 1943.