On December 11…
“I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior. How do you excuse betraying thousands of investors who entrusted me with their life savings? I will live with this pain, with this torment, for the rest of my life.”
~Bernard Madoff
1862 – The four-day Battle of Fredericksburg began.
Generally considered as one of the most one-sided battles of the Civil War – with Union casualties more than three times as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates.
The Union army, commanded by Major General Ambrose Burnside, would not realize the full effect of his ill-conceived plan of attack until two days later when they attempted to overrun the Confederates at Marye’s Heights … something we’ll discuss on the 13th.
1941 – Italy and Germany declared war on the United States, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor had surprised even Germany.
Although Adolf Hitler had made an oral agreement with Japan that Germany would join a war against the United States, he was uncertain as to how the war would be engaged. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor answered that question.
On December 8, Japanese Ambassador Oshima went to German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to nail the Germans down on a formal declaration of war against America.
Von Ribbentrop stalled for time; he knew that Germany was under no obligation to do this under the terms of the Tripartite Pact, which promised help if Japan was attacked, but not if Japan was the aggressor. Von Ribbentrop feared that the addition of another antagonist, the United States, would overwhelm the German war effort.
But Hitler thought otherwise. He was convinced that the United States would soon beat him to the punch and declare war on Germany. Hitler despised Roosevelt for his repeated verbal attacks against his Nazi ideology. He also believed that Japan was much stronger than it was, and that once Japan had defeated the United States, it would turn and help Germany defeat Russia.
That same day, Hitler addressed the Reichstag to defend the declaration. The failure of the New Deal, argued Hitler, was the real cause of the war, as President Roosevelt, supported by plutocrats and Jews, attempted to cover up for the collapse of his economic agenda.
“First he incites war, then falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war,” declared Hitler, causing the Reichstag members to leap to their feet in thunderous applause.
1946 – John D. Rockefeller, Jr. offered a six-block area of land in New York City for use as world headquarters of the United Nations. The offer was accepted the following day.
1946 – In the aftermath of World War II, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to establish the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), an organization to help provide relief and support to children living in countries devastated by the war.
1951 – Following a season in which his batting average had dropped dramatically, Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball.
Joltin’ Joe played his entire 13-year career with the New York Yankees. His lifetime batting average was .325 and his streak of 56 consecutive games with at least one hit still stands as a record.
1964 – Singer Sam Cooke was shot to death by a Los Angeles motel manager.
According to Bertha Franklin, manager of the Motel Hacienda, Cooke had checked in earlier that evening. She claimed that Cooke later broke into her manager’s office-apartment in a rage, wearing nothing but a shoe and a sports coat, demanding to know the whereabouts of a woman who had accompanied him to the motel.
According to Franklin, she grappled with Cooke, with the two of them falling to the floor before she got up and retrieved her gun, firing at Cooke in self-defense because she feared for her life. Cooke was struck once in the torso and, according to Franklin, he exclaimed “Lady, you shot me” before mounting a last charge at her. She beat him over his head with a broomstick before he finally fell, mortally wounded by the gunshot.
The courts ruled that Cooke was drunk and distressed, and that the manager had killed Cooke in what was later ruled a justifiable homicide. In the years since his death, the circumstances surrounding Cooke’s shooting have been called into question by his family and others.
Though the truth of what happened on that day in 1964 remains a mystery, Sam Cooke’s place in the history of popular music is anything but uncertain. With hit songs such as You Send Me, Cupid, Another Saturday Night, and many more, he remains a musical giant.
1972 – Apollo 17 landed on the surface of the Moon.
It was the sixth and last landing of humans. Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent a total of 22 hours doing extra-vehicular activity in the three days they were on the surface.
1978 – Six masked men bound 10 employees at a Lufthansa cargo area at New York’s Kennedy Airport and stole an estimated $5 million in cash ($18.1 million today) and $875,000 in jewelry ($3.2 million today), making it at the time the largest cash robbery committed on American soil.
The robbery – the brainchild of Jimmy Burke, an associate of the Lucchese crime family – was a key plot element in the 1990 film, Goodfellas. Burke – played by Robert De Niro in the film – was convicted of murder on February 19, 1985, after Henry Hill testified against him and joined the Witness Protection Program. Burke died of lung cancer at the age 64 in 1996
1987 – Wall Street, starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, premiered in over seven hundred theaters in the U.S.
Produced on a budget of $16.5 million, the film raked in over $45 million at the box office. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as unscrupulous corporate raider Gordon Gekko.
1998 – The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.
2008 – Financier Bernard Madoff was arrested at his New York City apartment and charged with masterminding a long-running Ponzi scheme later estimated to involve around $65 billion, making it one of the biggest investment frauds in Wall Street history.
The day before, Madoff had revealed to his brother and two sons, who worked for the legitimate arm of his firm, that his investment-advisory business was a fraud and nearly bankrupt.
Madoff was freed on $10 million bail, and placed under 24-hour house arrest at his penthouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to the 11 felony counts against him, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury. On June 29 of that year, a federal district court judge in Manhattan sentenced Madoff to 150 years behind bars, calling his actions “extraordinary evil.”
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2018 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.