@rh18bold:Today in History

Today is Monday, December 15, the 350th day of 2008. There are 16 days left in the year.

On this date

In 1791, in the United States, the Bill of Rights went into effect following ratification by Virginia.

In 1890, Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, S.D., during a confrontation with Indian police.

In 1938, groundbreaking ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial took place in Washington, D.C., with President Franklin D. Roosevelt taking part.

In 1944, a single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, who was a major in the US Army Air Forces, disappeared over the English Channel while en route to Paris.

In 1944, US forces invaded Mindoro Island in the Philippines.

In 1948, former State Department official Alger Hiss was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on charges of perjury. (He was convicted in 1950.)

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi SS colonel, was sentenced to death in Jerusalem for organising the deportation of Jews to concentration camps.

In 1964, Canada's House of Commons approved dropping the "Red Ensign" flag in favour of a new design of a red maple leaf on a white background.

In 1965, the US spacecraft Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, carrying Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford and Frank Borman and Jim Lovell respectively made the first space rendezvous, flying side by side to within ten feet of each other for two orbits.

In 1973, J. Paul Getty III was found in southern Italy after being kidnapped for five months, during which his right ear was cut off and sent to a Rome newspaper.

In 1978, Cleveland became the first major US city since the Great Depression to default on its loans.

In 2000, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma ordered the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.

In 2005, Iraqis voted to elect the first full-term parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Thought for Today

"History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstances." — Donald Creighton, Canadian historian (1902-1979).