DECEMBER 6th

On this date in:
1790	Congress moved from New York City to Philadelphia.
1884	Army engineers completed construction of the Washington Monument.
1889	Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, died in New Orleans at age 81.
1907	The worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurred as 362 men and boys died in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, W.Va.
1947	Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Harry S. Truman.
1957	AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
1957	America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
1969	A free concert by the Rolling Stones at Altamont Speedway in Livermore, Calif., was marred by the deaths of four people, including a man who was stabbed by a Hell's Angel.
1973	House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned after pleading no contest to income tax evasion.
1982	A bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing 11 soldiers and six civilians.
1989	Fourteen women were shot to death at the University of Montreal's school of engineering by a man who then took his own life.
1992	Thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque in India, setting off two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.
1994	Orange County, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection due to investment losses of about $2 billion.
1998	Hugo Chavez, who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the Venezuelan government six years earlier, was elected president.
1999	SabreTech, an aircraft maintenance company, was convicted of mishandling oxygen canisters blamed for a cargo hold fire that caused the 1996 ValuJet crash in the Everglades that killed 110 people.
2003	Army became the first team to finish 0-13 in major college football history after a 34-6 loss to Navy.
2004	Al-Qaida struck the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with explosives and machine guns, killing nine people.
2006	The bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded that President George W. Bush's war policies had failed in almost every regard, and said the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating."

Article of the day

Washington Monument completed

On this day in 1884, in Washington, D.C., workers place a nine-inch aluminum pyramid atop a tower of white marble, completing the construction of an impressive monument to the city's namesake and the nation's first president, George Washington.
As early as 1783, the infant U.S. Congress decided that a statue of George Washington, the great Revolutionary War general, should be placed near the site of the new Congressional building, wherever it might be. After then-President Washington asked him to lay out a new federal capital on the Potomac River in 1791, architect Pierre L'Enfant left a place for the statue at the western end of the sweeping National Mall (near the monument's present location).

It wasn't until 1832, however--33 years after Washington's death--that anyone really did anything about the monument. That year, a private Washington National Monument Society was formed. After holding a design competition and choosing an elaborate Greek temple-like design by architect Robert Mills, the society began a fundraising drive to raise money for the statue's construction. These efforts--including appeals to the nation's schoolchildren--raised some $230,000, far short of the $1 million needed. Construction began anyway, on July 4, 1848, as representatives of the society laid the cornerstone of the monument: a 24,500-pound block of pure white marble.

Six years later, with funds running low, construction was halted. Around the time the Civil War began in 1861, author Mark Twain described the unfinished monument as looking like a "hollow, oversized chimney." No further progress was made until 1876--the centennial of American independence--when President Ulysses S. Grant authorized construction to be completed.

Made of some 36,000 blocks of marble and granite stacked 555 feet in the air, the monument was the tallest structure in the world at the time of its completion in December 1884. In the six months following the dedication ceremony, over 10,000 people climbed the nearly 900 steps to the top of the Washington Monument. Today, an elevator makes the trip far easier, and more than 800,000 people visit the monument each year. A city law passed in 1910 restricted the height of new buildings to ensure that the monument will remain the tallest structure in Washington, D.C.--a fitting tribute to the man known as the "Father of His Country."

Today Birthdays

Lindsay Price turns 32 years old today.

AP Photo/Evan Agostini Actress Lindsay Price ("Lipstick Jungle") turns 32 years old today.

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