1776 – Phi Beta Kappa was founded by five students at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The first meeting was held in the Apollo Room of the Old Raleigh Tavern.
John Heath, the first president of Phi Beta Kappa, was determined to develop a student society that would be much more serious minded than its predecessors at the college, one devoted to the pursuit of liberal education and intellectual fellowship. The Greek initials for the society’s motto, “Love of learning is the guide of life,” form the name Phi Beta Kappa.
1792 – The United States presidential election, which was held from November 2 to December 5, resulted in the re-election of President George Washington by a unanimous vote in the Electoral College.
1804 – The United States presidential election, which was held from November 2 to December 5, ended with the re-election of President Thomas Jefferson.
1832 – The United States presidential election, which was held from November 2 to December 5, ended with the re-election of President Andrew Jackson.
1873 – Bridget Landregan was found beaten and strangled to death in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. According to witnesses, a man in black clothes and a flowing cape attempted to sexually assault the dead girl before running away. In 1874, a man fitting the same description clubbed another young girl, Mary Sullivan, to death. His third victim, Mary Tynan, was bludgeoned in her bed in 1875. Although she survived for a year after the severe attack, she was never able to identify her attacker.
Residents of Boston were shocked to learn that the killer had been among them all along. Thomas Piper, the sexton at the Warren Avenue Baptist Church, was known for his flowing black cape, but because he was friendly with the parishioners, nobody suspected his involvement. But when five-year-old Mabel Young, who was last seen with the sexton, was found dead in the church’s belfry in the summer of 1876, Piper became the prime suspect. Young’s skull had been crushed with a wooden club.
Piper, who was dubbed “The Boston Belfry Murderer,” confessed to the four killings after his arrest. He was convicted and sentenced to die, and he was hanged in 1876.
1876 – A fire at the Brooklyn Theater in New York killed nearly 300 people and injured hundreds more. Some victims perished from a combination of burns and smoke inhalation; others were trampled to death in the general panic that ensued.
The play The Two Orphans was showing. The theater, built five years earlier, was very popular at the time and all 900 seats were filled. Sometime near the start of the performance, a gas light ignited some extra scenery stored in the fly space behind the stage. It wasn’t until midway through the play that stagehands noticed the quickly spreading flames. Unfortunately, there were no fire hoses or water buckets at hand and the fire spread, unbeknownst to the cast and audience.
Despite lead actor Harry Murdock’s best attempt to calm the crowd, bedlam ensued, particularly in the balcony and rear of the theater. A narrow staircase was the only the exit from the balcony (there were no fire escapes) and panic resulted in a stampede in which many were crushed and others remained trapped. Meanwhile, the fire grew out of control. Witnesses saw Murdock return to the dressing room to change clothes; he then tried to wiggle out of a small window. He couldn’t get through, and died when the floor gave way and he fell to the basement.
By the time firefighters arrived it was too late for hundreds of people. The fire raged through the night and destroyed nearly the entire building. When would-be rescuers were finally able to get in, all they found were bodies melted together. Up to 100 of the victims were burned beyond recognition and could not be identified. A mass grave was set up at the Green-Wood Cemetery. In all, approximately 295 people died.
1929 – The American League for Physical Culture was organized in New York City. Just what is the ALPC? If you guessed a nudist organization, you were correct!
1933 – The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and brought an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the requisite three-fourths majority of states’ approval.
1941 – The Lexington, one of the two largest aircraft carriers employed by the United States during World War II, made its way across the Pacific in order to carry a squadron of dive bombers to defend Midway Island from an anticipated Japanese attack.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were anticipating a Japanese strike as retaliation – they just didn’t know where. The Philippines, Wake Island, Midway Island-all were possibilities. American intelligence reports had sighted the Japanese fleet movement out from Taiwan, apparently headed for Indochina.
Army intelligence reassured the president that, despite fears, Japan was most likely headed for Thailand, not the United States. The Lexington never made it to Midway Island. When it learned that the Japanese fleet had, in fact, attacked Pearl Harbor, it turned back, and never encountered a Japanese warship en route or employing a single aircraft in its defense. By the time it reached Hawaii, it was December 13.
1945 – At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 took off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.
Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel.
By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.
The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.
1951 – “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Major League outfielder (sadly remembered for his alleged association with the Black Sox Scandal, in which members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the World Series) died of a heart attack at the age of 64.
Jackson’s guilt in the scandal has long been disputed, and his expulsion from baseball – and the automatic preclusion of eligibility for election into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame – makes him one of the game’s legendary figures.
1955 – After many years of rivalry, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to become the AFL-CIO.
1964 – For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor of the Vietnam War.
1978 – The Philadelphia Phillies made Pete Rose baseball’s highest paid player when they signed him to a four-year contract worth $800,000 a season.
Contrast that to Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Clayton Kershaw who will make $32,571,428 next season. That’s $32.4 Million!
1978 – In an effort to prop up an unpopular pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union signed a “friendship treaty” with the Afghan government agreeing to provide economic and military assistance. The treaty moved the Russians another step closer to their disastrous involvement in the Afghan civil war between the Soviet-supported communist government and the Muslim rebels, the Mujahideen, which officially began in 1979.
1991 – Richard Speck, a mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 14, 1966, died of a heart attack after 25 years in prison. He was 49.
1994 – Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be the first GOP speaker of the House in four decades.
1996 – The baseball players union executive board unanimously approved a new collective bargaining agreement, marking the end of the longest labor dispute in baseball history. The new agreement introduced a Luxury Tax, revenue sharing, interleague play, and several provisions designed to compel the future cooperation of owners and players.
1998 – Albert Gore, Sr., former U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator representing Tennessee (and the father of former Vice President Al Gore) died at the age of 90.
2002 – Senate Republican leader Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond’s pro-segregation 1948 presidential campaign. At a birthday party for Thurmond, Lott said, “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”
Considering that Thurmond had based his presidential campaign largely on the preservation of racial segregation, it was an idiotic statement. The subsequent uproar led to Lott’s resignation from the Senate leadership.
2002 – Roone Arledge (sports and news broadcasting pioneer who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998) died of prostate cancer at the age of 71.
Arledge created many programs still airing today, such as Monday Night Football, ABC World News, Primetime, Nightline and 20/20.
2007 – The Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska was the scene of a mass shooting. Nineteen-year-old Robert A. Hawkins stepped out of an elevator on the third floor and opened fire, killing eight people and wounding four others over the course of six minutes, before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
2008 – O.J. Simpson was sentenced to a total of thirty-three years in prison for his involvement in a robbery of various sports memorabilia at the Palace Station Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is currently incarcerated at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Lovelock, NV. He is eligible for parole in 2017.
2008 – Actress Nina Foch (An American In Paris, Scaramouche, Spartacus, Executive Suite {for which she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress} and The Ten Commandments) died of complications from a blood disorder at the age of 84.
2010 – “Dandy” Don Meredith (quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys for nine seasons, and later a color analyst on Monday Night Football) died after suffering a brain hemorrhage at the age of 72.
2013 – Nelson Mandela (South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, who served 27 years in prison for treason, but forged a peaceful end to white rule by negotiating with his captors after his release in 1990 and became President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999) died of a lung infection at the age of 95.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2014 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.
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