On December 17…
“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space on the infinite highway of the air.”
~Wilbur Wright
“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”
~Orville Wright
1777 – Charles Gravier, the French foreign minister, officially acknowledged the United States as an independent nation. News of the Continental Army’s impressive and long-awaited victory against the British at Saratoga the previous October convinced King Louis XVI that the American rebels had some hope of defeating the British Empire.
1862 – U.S. Army General Ulysses S. Grant, the future 18th president of the United States, issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews suspected of engaging in war profiteering from a region occupied by the Union Army.
Grant’s order prohibited the issuing of trade licenses to Jews within the Tennessee district. Furthermore, it required them to leave the district within 24 hours of the order or risk imprisonment.
President Abraham Lincoln did not know about Grant’s order and expressed surprise when a group of Jewish leaders met with him to protest Grant’s decree.
Lincoln expressed his disbelief to Grant in a letter: “a paper purporting to be issued by you has been presented here. It expels all Jews from your department. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked.”
Three days later, Grant revoked his order.
1903 – Near Kitty Hawk, NC, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft.
Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.
1941 – Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was relieved of his command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet as part of a shake-up of officers in the wake of the Pearl Harbor disaster.
Even as word was out that Japan was likely to make a first strike against the United States as the negotiations in Washington floundered, Kimmel took no extraordinary actions at Pearl Harbor.
He avoided a probable court-martial when he requested early retirement, but when Admiral Kimmel’s Story, an “as told to” autobiography, was published in 1955, Kimmel made it plain that he believed FDR sacrificed him – and his career – to take suspicion off himself.
Kimmel believed Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed, although no evidence has ever been adduced to support his allegation.
1944 – U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issued Public Proclamation No. 21, declaring that, effective January 2, 1945, Japanese American “evacuees” from the West Coast could return to their homes.
On February 19, 1942, 10 weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas “as deemed necessary or desirable.”
The military in turn defined the entire West Coast, home to the majority of Americans of Japanese ancestry or citizenship, as a military area.
By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to remote internment camps built by the U.S. military in scattered locations around the country.
For the next two and a half years, many of these Japanese Americans endured extremely difficult living conditions and poor treatment by their military guards.
During the course of World War II, 10 Americans were convicted of spying for Japan, but not one of them was of Japanese ancestry.
1944 – 84 American Prisoners of War were murdered by their German captors near Malmedy, Belgium. The massacre was committed during the Battle of The Bulge.
An American convoy of about thirty vehicles was traveling toward Ligneuville when they were intercepted by Col. Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Division. Armed with only rifles and other small arms, the Americans surrendered to the Nazi tank force.
While the German column led by Peiper continued on the road toward Ligneuville, the American prisoners were taken to a field, joined with others captured by the SS earlier in the day.
About 120 men were gathered in the field. For reasons that remain unclear today, the SS troops suddenly fired on their prisoners with machine guns.
Some of the prisoners tried to escape but most were shot where they stood.
A few sought shelter in a building at the crossroads. The SS soldiers set fire to the building, and shot all who tried to escape the flames.
Some in the field had dropped to the ground and pretended to be dead when the shooting began. However, SS troops walked among the bodies and shot anyone who appeared to be alive.
1961 – A fire at Gran Circus Norte-Americano – the Brazilian version of America’s Ringling Brothers – in Niteroi, Brazil, killed 503 people and severely burned hundreds more.
Adilson Marcelino Alves, a disgruntled employee, and two accomplices, were later arrested and convicted. That is the official version but it has long been maintained that electrical problems that were covered up was the real cause.
With 3000 people present, a trapeze artist noticed the fire. In a little over five minutes, the circus was completely devoured by the flames.
Of all the casualties, 323 died immediately, with the total reaching 503 dead as others succumbed to their injuries.
About 70% of the victims were children. The circus tent imported from India had been advertised as being made of nylon, but was actually cotton treated with paraffin wax, a highly flammable material.
At least 500 more people were seriously injured, from burns, smoke inhalation and trampling.
1962 – Actor Thomas Mitchell died of Peritoneal mesothelioma at the age of 70.
Mitchell’s incredible career included prominent roles in many major “blockbusters” such as Lost Horizon, The Hurricane, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Gone With The Wind, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Stagecoach for which he earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
1963 – Marsha Albert, a 15-year-old from Silver Spring, Maryland, kicked Beatlemania in the U.S. into high gear.
Six days earlier, she had seen a segment about the band on Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News. In his report, Alexander Kendrick, CBS News’ correspondent in London, said “These British musicians are the latest objects of adolescent adulation and culturally the modern manifestation of compulsive tribal singing and dancing.”
That was good enough for Marsha.
She wrote a letter to Carroll James, a DJ for WWDC-AM in Washington, DC.
“It wasn’t so much what I had seen, it’s what I had heard. They had a scene where they played a clip of She Loves You and I thought it was a great song… I wrote that I thought The Beatles would be really popular here, and if he could get one of their records, that would really be great.”
James arranged for a copy of the new single to be shipped over from Britain, and Albert (shown above with James in 1984) was invited to introduce the very first play, which she did.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are The Beatles singing I Want To Hold Your Hand.”
The song was a huge hit with listeners, and was picked up by DJs in Chicago and St Louis. Although Capitol Records initially threatened to seek a court order banning its airplay, they eventually decided to rush-release the already-prepared single two weeks ahead of schedule.
I Want To Hold Your Hand was released in the U.S. on December 26, 1963. The response was instant: 750,000 copies were sold in the first three days, and 10,000 copies were sold each hour in New York City.
1969 – The U.S. Air Force closed its Project “Blue Book” by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.
1969 – An estimated 50 million viewers watched singer Tiny Tim marry Miss Vicki on NBC’s Tonight Show.
1975 – A federal jury in Sacramento, CA, sentenced Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme to life in prison for her attempted assassination of President Gerald R. Ford.
During her trial, Fromme pleaded not guilty to the “attempted assassination of a president” charge, arguing that although her gun contained bullets, it had not been cocked, and therefore she had not actually intended to shoot the president.
The jury was not swayed – or fooled.
She received a life sentence under a 1965 law which made attempted presidential assassinations a federal crime punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison.
She was released on parole on August 14, 2009.
1989 – The Simpsons premiered on Fox. The first episode was Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire.
2003 – National Football League Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham died of a heart aneurysm at the age of 82.
With Graham at quarterback the Cleveland Browns went to the league championship game every year between 1946 and 1955, winning seven of them.
2005 – President George W. Bush acknowledged he had personally authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
2005 – Actress Jennifer Jones died of natural causes at the age of 90.
She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing, Duel In The Sun and Love Letters, and was the winner of the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Song Of Bernadette.
2006 – Denis Payton, saxophonist with the Dave Clark Five, died of cancer at the age of 63.
Payton’s solid saxophone drove many of the band’s early hit songs, including Glad All Over, Bits And Pieces, and Any Way You Want It.
2011 – Kim Jong il, North Korea’s ruthless, reclusive dictator, died of a heart attack.
Kim, who assumed leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father in 1994, ruled the Communist nation with an iron fist, and his isolated, repressive regime was accused of numerous human rights violations.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2019 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.