DECEMBER 15th

On this date in:
1791	The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect following ratification by Virginia.
1890	Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, S.D., during a clash with Indian police.
1938	Ground was broken for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
1939	The movie "Gone With the Wind" had its world premiere in Atlanta.
1944	Bandleader Glenn Miller was killed when his U.S. Army plane disappeared over the English Channel.
1961	Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death by an Israeli court.
1965	Two U.S. manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, maneuvered to within 10 feet of each other while in orbit.
1966	Movie producer Walt Disney died at age 65.
1978	President Jimmy Carter announced he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year's Day and sever official relations with Taiwan.
1989	A popular uprising began in Romania; it led to the downfall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
2003	The late Sen. Strom Thurmond's family acknowledged Essie Mae Washington-Williams' claim that she was Thurmond's illegitimate mixed-race daughter.
2004	American telecommunications giants Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. announced they would merge in a $35 billion deal.
2005	Millions of Iraqis turned out to choose a parliament in a mostly peaceful election.
2005	Former Sen. William Proxmire, the Wisconsin Democrat who had fought government waste with his "Golden Fleece" awards, died at age 90.

Article of the day

Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens

On this day in 2001, Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to fortify the tower without eliminating its famous lean.

In the 12th century, construction began on the bell tower for the cathedral of Pisa, a busy trade center on the Arno River in western Italy, some 50 miles from Florence. While construction was still in progress, the tower's foundation began to sink into the soft, marshy ground, causing it to lean to one side. Its builders tried to compensate for the lean by making the top stories slightly taller on one side, but the extra masonry required only made the tower sink further. By the time it was completed in 1360, modern-day engineers say it was a miracle it didn't fall down completely.

Though the cathedral itself and the adjoining baptistery also leaned slightly, it was the Torre Pendente di Pisa, or Leaning Tower of Pisa, that became the city's most famous tourist attraction. By the 20th century, the 190-foot-high white marble tower leaned a dramatic 15 feet off the perpendicular. In the year before its closing in 1990, 1 million people visited the old tower, climbing its 293 weathered steps to the top and gazing out over the green Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) outside. Fearing it was about to collapse, officials appointed a group of 14 archeologists, architects and soil experts to figure out how to take some--but not all--of the famous tilt away.

Though an initial attempt in 1994 almost toppled the tower, engineers were eventually able to reduce the lean by between 16 and 17 inches by removing earth from underneath the foundations. When the tower reopened on December 15, 2001, engineers predicted it would take 300 years to return to its 1990 position. Though entrance to the tower is now limited to guided tours, hordes of tourists can still be found outside, striking the classic pose--standing next to the tower pretending to hold it up--as cameras flash.

Today Birthdays

Mark Warner turns 54 years old today.

AP Photo/Ron Edmonds Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner turns 54 years old today.

80 Ernest Ashworth Country singer 75 Tim Conway Comedian ("The Carol Burnett Show") 69 Cindy Birdsong Singer (The Supremes) 68 Nick Buoniconti Football Hall of Famer 66 Dave Clark Rock musician, producer (The Dave Clark Five) 62 Carmine Appice Rock musician (Vanilla Fudge) 59 Don Johnson Actor ("Miami Vice") 56 Julie Taymor Director 54 Alex Cox Director ("Repo Man," "Sid and Nancy") 54 Justin Ross Actor 53 Paul Simonon Rock musician (The Clash) 48 Doug Phelps Country singer 47 Reginald Hudlin Movie producer 45 Helen Slater Actress 43 Molly Price Actress 38 Michael Shanks Actor ("Stargate SG-1," "Stargate: Atlantis") 36 Stuart Townsend Actor 31 Kito Trawick Crowd hyper (Ghostown DJs) 29 Adam Brody Actor ("The O.C.") 27 George O. Gore II Actor ("My Wife and Kids")

DECEMBER 14th

On this date in:
1799	George Washington, the first president of the United States, died at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67.
1819	Alabama joined the Union as the 22nd state.
1861	Prince Albert, husband of Britain's Queen Victoria, died in London.
1911	Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole.
1946	The United Nations General Assembly voted to establish the U.N. headquarters in New York City.
1979	The album "London Calling" by the Clash was released.
1985	Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
1989	Nobel Peace laureate Andrei D. Sakharov died in Moscow at age 68.
1993	A Colorado judge struck down as unconstitutional the state's voter-approved ban on gay rights laws.
1997	Cuban President Fidel Castro declared Christmas 1997 an official holiday to ensure the success of Pope John Paul II's upcoming visit to the communist country.
1998	President Bill Clinton stood witness as hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel.
1999	U.S. and German negotiators agreed to establish a $5.2 billion fund for Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers.
1999	Charles M. Schulz announced he was retiring the "Peanuts" comic strip.
2000	The Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner.
2006	South Korea's Ban Ki-moon was sworn in as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations.

Article of the day

Amundsen reaches South Pole

Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott.

Amundsen, born in Borge, near Oslo, in 1872, was one of the great figures in polar exploration. In 1897, he was first mate on a Belgian expedition that was the first ever to winter in the Antarctic. In 1903, he guided the 47-ton sloop Gjöa through the Northwest Passage and around the Canadian coast, the first navigator to accomplish the treacherous journey. Amundsen planned to be the first man to the North Pole, and he was about to embark in 1909 when he learned that the American Robert Peary had achieved the feat.

Amundsen completed his preparations and in June 1910 sailed instead for Antarctica, where the English explorer Robert F. Scott was also headed with the aim of reaching the South Pole. In early 1911, Amundsen sailed his ship into Antarctica's Bay of Whales and set up base camp 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott. In October, both explorers set off--Amundsen using sleigh dogs, and Scott employing Siberian motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen's expedition won the race to the Pole and returned safely to base camp in late January.

Scott's expedition was less fortunate. The motor sleds broke down, the ponies had to be shot, and the dog teams were sent back as Scott and four companions continued on foot. On January 18, 1912, they reached the pole only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by over a month. Weather on the return journey was exceptionally bad--two members perished--and a storm later trapped Scott and the other two survivors in their tent only 11 miles from their base camp. Scott's frozen body was found later that year.

After his historic Antarctic journey, Amundsen established a successful shipping business. He later made attempts to become the first explorer to fly over the North Pole. In 1925, in an airplane, he flew within 150 miles of the goal. In 1926, he passed over the North Pole in a dirigible just three days after American explorer Richard E. Byrd had apparently done so in an aircraft. In 1996, a diary that Byrd had kept on the flight was found that seemed to suggest that the he had turned back 150 miles short of its goal because of an oil leak, making Amundsen's dirigible expedition the first flight over the North Pole.

In 1928, Amundsen lost his life while trying to rescue a fellow explorer whose dirigible had crashed at sea near Spitsbergen, Norway.

Today Birthdays

Vanessa Hudgens turns 20 years old today.

AP Photo/Dan Steinberg Actress Vanessa Hudgens ("High School Musical" movies) turns 20 years old today.

88 Clark Terry Jazz trumpeter 86 Don Hewitt TV producer ("60 Minutes") 70 Hal Williams Actor 62 Patty Duke Actress 62 Michael Ovitz Former Walt Disney Co. president 62 Stan Smith Tennis Hall of Famer 62 Joyce Vincent-Wilson Singer (Tony Orlando and Dawn) 60 Dee Wallace Actress 59 Cliff Williams Rock musician (AC/DC) 50 Mike Scott Rock singer, musician (The Waterboys) 50 Peter "Spider" Stacy Singer, musician (The Pogues) 45 Cynthia Gibb Actress 43 Craig Biggio Baseball player 39 Natascha McElhone Actress 33 KaDee Strickland Actress ("Private Practice") 33 Brian Dalyrimple R&B singer (Soul for Real) 32 Tammy Blanchard Actress 30 Patty Schnyder Tennis player 29 Sophie Monk Actress

DECEMBER 13th

On this date in:
1577	Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.
1642	Dutch navigator Abel Tasman arrived in present-day New Zealand.
1769	Dartmouth College in New Hampshire received its charter.
1862	Confederate forces dealt Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia.
1918	President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to attend the post-World War I peace conference at Versailles, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.
1988	PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to visit New York.
1989	South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town.
1996	The U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to be the world body's seventh secretary-general.
2000	Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency 36 days after Election Day.
2001	The Pentagon released a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader said the deaths and destruction achieved by the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations.
2001	Five suspected Islamic militants killed nine people in an attack on India's parliament before being killed themselves.
2001	President George W. Bush served formal notice that the United States was pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
2002	Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal.
2003	Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, near his hometown of Tikrit.
2007	Shareholders of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, approved a takeover by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Article of the day

Al Gore concedes presidential election

Vice President Al Gore reluctantly concedes defeat to Texas Governor George W. Bush in his bid for the presidency, following weeks of legal battles over the recounting of votes in Florida, on this day in 2000.

In a televised speech from his ceremonial office next to the White House, Gore said that while he was deeply disappointed and sharply disagreed with the Supreme Court verdict that ended his campaign, ''partisan rancor must now be put aside.''

“I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College'' he said. “And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.''

Gore had won the national popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, but narrowly lost Florida, giving the Electoral College to Bush 271 to 266.

Gore said he had telephoned Bush to offer his congratulations, honoring him, for the first time, with the title ''president-elect.''

''I promised that I wouldn't call him back this time'' Gore said, referring to the moment on election night when he had called Bush to tell him he was going to concede, then called back a half hour later to retract that concession.

Gore only hinted at what he might do in the future. ''I've seen America in this campaign and I like what I see. It's worth fighting for -- and that's a fight I'll never stop.''

Among the friends and family beside Gore were his wife, Tipper, and his running mate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and his wife, Hadassah.

A little more than an hour later, Bush addressed the nation for the first time as president-elect, declaring that the “nation must rise above a house divided.” Speaking from the podium of the Texas House of Representatives, Bush devoted his speech to themes of reconciliation following one of the closest and most disputed presidential elections in U.S. history. ''I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation,'' Bush said.

Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, took office on January 20, 2001. They were re-elected in 2004 over Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards.

Today Birthdays

Taylor Swift turns 19 years old today.

AP Photo/Peter Kramer Country singer Taylor Swift turns 19 years old today.

88 George P. Shultz Former Secretary of State 83 Dick Van Dyke Actor 79 Christopher Plummer Actor 78 Buck White Country singer 78 Lou Adler Music producer 74 Richard Zanuck Movie producer 67 John Davidson Singer 65 Ferguson Jenkins Baseball Hall of Famer 63 Kathy Garver Actress ("Family Affair") 60 Jeff "Skunk" Baxter Rock musician (The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan) 60 Ron Getman Country singer (The Tractors) 60 Ted Nugent Rock musician 59 Robert Lindsay Actor 59 Randy Owen Country singer, musician (Alabama) 58 Wendie Malick Actress ("Just Shoot Me") 58 Tom Vilsack Former governor of Iowa 55 Ben Bernanke Federal Reserve chairman 54 John Anderson Country singer 54 Steve Forbert Rock singer 52 Morris Day R&B singer-actor (The Time) 51 Steve Buscemi Actor 49 Johnny Whitaker Actor ("Family Affair") 39 Gary Zimmerman Football Hall of Famer 41 Jamie Foxx Actor, singer 39 Sergei Fedorov Hockey player 34 Debbie Matenopoulos TV personality 33 Thomas Delonge Rock musician 33 James Kyson Lee Actor ("Heroes") 27 Chelsea Hertford Actress ("Major Dad") 27 Amy Lee Rock singer (Evanescence)

DECEMBER 12th

On this date in:
1745	John Jay, American statesman and the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, was born in New York City.
1787	Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1870	Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first black congressman.
1897	"The Katzenjammer Kids," the pioneering comic strip by Rudolph Dirks, debuted in the New York Journal.
1914	The New York Stock Exchange re-opened for the first time since July 30. The market had shut down when World War I broke out.
1915	Singer Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, N.J.
1917	Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.
1925	The first motel - the "Motel Inn" - opened, in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
1946	A United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of U.N. headquarters.
1947	The United Mine Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of Labor.
1975	Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty to trying to kill President Gerald R. Ford.
1998	Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles died in Tallahassee at age 68.
1998	The House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth and final article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton and submitted the case to the full House.
1999	"Catch-22" author Joseph Heller died at age 76.
2000	A divided U.S. Supreme Court halted the presidential recount in Florida, effectively making Republican George W. Bush the winner.
2000	The Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines.
2003	Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the "Free Willy" movies, died in a Norwegian fjord.
2007	Ike Turner, the rock pioneer and ex-husband of Tina Turner, died at age 76.

Article of the day

Da Vinci notebook sells for over $5 million

On this day in 1980, American oil tycoon Armand Hammer pays $5,126,000 at auction for a notebook containing writings by the legendary artist Leonardo da Vinci.

The manuscript, written around 1508, was one of some 30 similar books da Vinci produced during his lifetime on a variety of subjects. It contained 72 loose pages featuring some 300 notes and detailed drawings, all relating to the common theme of water and how it moved. Experts have said that da Vinci drew on it to paint the background of his masterwork, the Mona Lisa. The text, written in brown ink and chalk, read from right to left, an example of da Vinci's favored mirror-writing technique. The painter Giuseppi Ghezzi discovered the notebook in 1690 in a chest of papers belonging to Guglielmo della Porto, a 16th-century Milanese sculptor who had studied Leonardo's work. In 1717, Thomas Coke, the first earl of Leicester, bought the manuscript and installed it among his impressive collection of art at his family estate in England.

More than two centuries later, the notebook--by now known as the Leicester Codex--showed up on the auction block at Christie's in London when the current Lord Coke was forced to sell it to cover inheritance taxes on the estate and art collection. In the days before the sale, art experts and the press speculated that the notebook would go for $7 to $20 million. In fact, the bidding started at $1.4 million and lasted less than two minutes, as Hammer and at least two or three other bidders competed to raise the price $100,000 at a time. The $5.12 million price tag was the highest ever paid for a manuscript at that time; a copy of the legendary Gutenberg Bible had gone for only $2 million in 1978. "I’m very happy with the price. I expected to pay more," Hammer said later. "There is no work of art in the world I wanted more than this." Lord Coke, on the other hand, was only "reasonably happy" with the sale; he claimed the proceeds would not be sufficient to cover the taxes he owed.

Hammer, the president of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, renamed his prize the Hammer Codex and added it to his valuable collection of art. When Hammer died in 1990, he left the notebook and other works to the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Several years later, the museum offered the manuscript for sale, claiming it was forced to take this action to cover legal costs incurred when the niece and sole heir of Hammer's late wife, Frances, sued the estate claiming Hammer had cheated Frances out of her rightful share of his fortune. On November 11, 1994, the Hammer Codex was sold to an anonymous bidder--soon identified as Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft--at a New York auction for a new record high price of $30.8 million. Gates restored the title of Leicester Codex and has since loaned the manuscript to a number of museums for public display.

Today Birthdays

Jennifer Connelly turns 38 years old today.

AP Photo/Denis Poroy Actress Jennifer Connelly turns 38 years old today.

85 Bob Barker TV game show host ("The Price is Right") 84 Ed Koch Former New York City mayor 70 Connie Francis Singer, actress 68 Dionne Warwick R&B singer 65 Dickey Betts Rock musician (The Allman Brothers) 61 Wings Hauser Actor 59 Bill Nighy Actor ("Pirates of the Caribbean" movies) 58 Duane Chase Actor (Kurt in "The Sound of Music") 58 LaCosta Country singer 56 Cathy Rigby Actress, Olympic gymnast 51 Sheila E. Singer, musician 50 Sheree J. Wilson Actress 47 Daniel O'Donnell Singer 46 Tracy Austin Tennis Hall of Famer 45 Eric Schenkman Rock musician (Spin Doctors) 41 Nicholas Dimichino Rock musician (Nine Days) 39 Maggie Rodriguez TV host ("The Early Show") 38 Madchen Amick Actress 36 Hank Williams III Country singer 33 Mayim Bialik Actress ("Blossom") 31 Bridget Hall Model

DECEMBER 11th

On this date in:
1816	Indiana became the 19th state.
1872	America's first black governor took office as Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became acting governor of Louisiana. (He served for only 35 days, during the impeachment of Gov. Henry Clay Warmoth.)
1918	Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia.
1936	Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.
1937	Italy withdrew from the League of Nations.
1946	UNICEF (the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) was established.
1961	A U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon - the first direct American military support for South Vietnam's battle against Communist guerrillas.
1972	Man landed on the moon for the last time during the Apollo 17 mission.
1981	The U.N. Security Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be its fifth secretary-general.
1994	Russian troops rolled into breakaway republic of Chechnya in a failed bid to restore Moscow's control over the region.
1997	Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams became the first political ally of the Irish Republican Army to meet a British leader in 76 years as he conferred with Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.
1997	More than 150 countries agreed at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to take steps to control the greenhouse gas emissions.
1998	The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.
2000	Shortstop Alex Rodriguez agreed to a $252 million 10-year deal with the Texas Rangers, the most lucrative sports contract in history.
2002	A congressional report found that intelligence agencies before Sept. 11, 2001, were poorly organized, poorly equipped and slow to pursue clues that might have prevented that day's terrorist attacks.

Article of the day

Edward VIII abdicates

After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. He chose to abdicate after the British government, public, and the Church of England condemned his decision to marry the American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson. On the evening of December 11, he gave a radio address in which he explained, "I have found it impossible to carry on the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge the duties of king, as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love." On December 12, his younger brother, the duke of York, was proclaimed King George VI.

Edward, born in 1896, was the eldest son of King George V, who became the British sovereign in 1910. Still unmarried as he approached his 40th birthday, he socialized with the fashionable London society of the day. By 1934, he had fallen deeply in love with American socialite Wallis Warfield Simpson, who was married to Ernest Simpson, an English-American businessman who lived with Mrs. Simpson near London. Wallis, who was born in Pennsylvania, had previously married and divorced a U.S. Navy pilot. The royal family disapproved of Edward's married mistress, but by 1936 the prince was intent on marrying Mrs. Simpson. Before he could discuss this intention with his father, George V died, in January 1936, and Edward was proclaimed king.

The new king proved popular with his subjects, and his coronation was scheduled for May 1937. His affair with Mrs. Simpson was reported in American and continental European newspapers, but due to a gentlemen's agreement between the British press and the government, the affair was kept out of British newspapers. On October 27, 1936, Mrs. Simpson obtained a preliminary decree of divorce, presumably with the intent of marrying the king, which precipitated a major scandal. To the Church of England and most British politicians, an American woman twice divorced was unacceptable as a prospective British queen. Winston Churchill, then a Conservative backbencher, was the only notable politician to support Edward.

Despite the seemingly united front against him, Edward could not be dissuaded. He proposed a morganatic marriage, in which Wallis would be granted no rights of rank or property, but on December 2, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin rejected the suggestion as impractical. The next day, the scandal broke on the front pages of British newspapers and was discussed openly in Parliament. With no resolution possible, the king renounced the throne on December 10. The next day, Parliament approved the abdication instrument, and Edward VIII's reign came to an end. The new king, George VI, made his older brother the duke of Windsor. On June 3, 1937, the duke of Windsor and Wallis Warfield married at the Château de Cande in France's Loire Valley.

For the next two years, the duke and duchess lived primarily in France but visited other European countries, including Germany, where the duke was honored by Nazi officials in October 1937 and met with Adolf Hitler. After the outbreak of World War II, the duke accepted a position as liaison officer with the French. In June 1940, France fell to the Nazis, and Edward and Wallis went to Spain. During this period, the Nazis concocted a scheme to kidnap Edward with the intention of returning him to the British throne as a puppet king. George VI, like his prime minister, Winston Churchill, was adamantly opposed to any peace with Nazi Germany. Unaware of the Nazi kidnapping plot but conscious of Edward's pre-war Nazi sympathies, Churchill hastily offered Edward the governorship of the Bahamas in the West Indies. The duke and duchess set sail from Lisbon on August 1, 1940, narrowly escaping a Nazi SS team sent to seize them.

In 1945, the duke resigned his post, and the couple moved back to France. They lived mainly in Paris, and Edward made a few visits to England, such as to attend the funerals of King George VI in 1952 and his mother, Queen Mary, in 1953. It was not until 1967 that the duke and duchess were invited by the royal family to attend an official public ceremony, the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to Queen Mary. Edward died in Paris in 1972 but was buried at Frogmore, on the grounds of Windsor Castle. In 1986, Wallis died and was buried at his side.

Today Birthdays

Rita Moreno turns 77 years old today.

AP Photo/Matt Sayles Actress Rita Moreno turns 77 years old today.

69 Tom Hayden Activist 68 David Gates Singer (Bread) 67 Max Baucus U.S. senator, D-Mont. 66 Donna Mills Actress ("Knots Landing") 65 John Kerry U.S. senator, D-Mass. 64 Lynda Day George Actress 64 Brenda Lee Singer 62 Tony Brown Country music producer 60 Teri Garr Actress 56 Susan Seidelman Director 55 Bess Armstrong Actress 54 Jermaine Jackson Singer (The Jackson 5) 51 Mike Mesaros Rock musician (The Smithereens) 50 Nikki Sixx Rock musician (Motley Crue) 47 Darryl Jones Rock musician 44 David Schools Rock musician (Widespread Panic) 44 Justin Currie Rock musician (Del Amitri) 42 Gary Dourdan Actor ("CSI") 40 Mo'Nique Actress, comedian 35 Mos Def Rapper, actor 29 Rider Strong Actor

DECEMBER 10th

On this date in:

1520 Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant or face excommunication.

1817 Mississippi was admitted to the union as the 20th state.

1869 Women were granted the right to vote in the Wyoming Territory.

1898 A treaty was signed in Paris officially ending the Spanish-American War.

1906 President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

1931 Jane Addams became a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman so honored.

1946 Baseball Hall of Famer Walter Johnson died at age 59.

1948 The U.N. General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

1950 Ralph J. Bunche was presented the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.

1958 The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the United States as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York City to Miami.

1964 The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize during ceremonies in Oslo, Norway.

1965 The Grateful Dead played their first concert, at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.

1967 Singer Otis Redding died at age 26 in the crash of his private plane in Wisconsin.

1980 Rep. John W. Jenrette, D-S.C., resigned to avoid being expelled from the House following his conviction on charges related to the FBI's Abscam investigation.

1984 South African Bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize.

1994 Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize.

1998 Six astronauts swung open the doors to the new international space station, becoming the first guests aboard the 250-mile-high outpost.

1998 The Palestinian leadership scrapped constitutional clauses rejecting Israel's right to exist.

1999 Computer scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested and charged with removing secrets from secure computers at the Los Alamos weapons lab.

2002 Former President Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy in the Middle East in the 1970s.

2003 Iranian democracy activist Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, accepted the award in Oslo, Norway.

2005 Actor-comedian Richard Pryor died at age 65.

2005 Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., died at age 89.

Article of the day

First Nobel Prizes awarded

The first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be "annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1833, and four years later his family moved to Russia. His father ran a successful St. Petersburg factory that built explosive mines and other military equipment. Educated in Russia, Paris, and the United States, Alfred Nobel proved a brilliant chemist. When his father's business faltered after the end of the Crimean War, Nobel returned to Sweden and set up a laboratory to experiment with explosives. In 1863, he invented a way to control the detonation of nitroglycerin, a highly volatile liquid that had been recently discovered but was previously regarded as too dangerous for use. Two years later, Nobel invented the blasting cap, an improved detonator that inaugurated the modern use of high explosives. Previously, the most dependable explosive was black powder, a form of gunpowder.

Nitroglycerin remained dangerous, however, and in 1864 Nobel's nitroglycerin factory blew up, killing his younger brother and several other people. Searching for a safer explosive, Nobel discovered in 1867 that the combination of nitroglycerin and a porous substance called kieselguhr produced a highly explosive mixture that was much safer to handle and use. Nobel christened his invention "dynamite," for the Greek word dynamis, meaning "power." Securing patents on dynamite, Nobel acquired a fortune as humanity put his invention to use in construction and warfare.

In 1875, Nobel created a more powerful form of dynamite, blasting gelatin, and in 1887 introduced ballistite, a smokeless nitroglycerin powder. Around that time, one of Nobel's brothers died in France, and French newspapers printed obituaries in which they mistook him for Alfred. One headline read, "The merchant of death is dead." Alfred Nobel in fact had pacifist tendencies and in his later years apparently developed strong misgivings about the impact of his inventions on the world. After he died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896, the majority of his estate went toward the creation of prizes to be given annually in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The portion of his will establishing the Nobel Peace Prize read, "[one award shall be given] to the person who has done the most or best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Exactly five years after his death, the first Nobel awards were presented.

Today, the Nobel Prizes are regarded as the most prestigious awards in the world in their various fields. Notable winners have included Marie Curie, Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela. Multiple leaders and organizations sometimes receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and multiple researchers often share the scientific awards for their joint discoveries. In 1968, a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was established by the Swedish national bank, Sveriges Riksbank, and first awarded in 1969.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decides the prizes in physics, chemistry, and economic science; the Swedish Royal Caroline Medico-Surgical Institute determines the physiology or medicine award; the Swedish Academy chooses literature; and a committee elected by the Norwegian parliament awards the peace prize. The Nobel Prizes are still presented annually on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. In 2006, each Nobel Prize carried a cash prize of nearly $1,400,000 and recipients also received a gold medal, as is the tradition.

Today Birthdays

Raven-Symone turns 23 years old today.

AP Photo/Matt Sayles Actress Raven-Symone ("That's So Raven," "The Cosby Show") turns 23 years old today.

85 Harold Gould Actor 67 Fionnula Flanagan Actress 67 Tommy Kirk Actor 67 Chad Stuart Singer (Chad and Jeremy) 62 Gloria Loring Actress, singer 60 Jessica Cleaves R&B singer (Friends of Distinction) 60 Ralph Tavares R&B singer 57 Johnny Rodriguez Country singer 56 Susan Dey Actress ("L.A. Law," "The Partridge Family") 52 Rod Blagojevich Governor of Illinois 51 Michael Clarke Duncan Actor 51 Paul Hardcastle Jazz musician 48 Kenneth Branagh Actor, director 47 Nia Peeples Actress 44 Bobby Flay TV chef 43 J Mascis Rock musician 38 Kevin Sharp Country singer 37 Scot Alexander Rock musician (Dishwalla) 34 Meg White Rock musician (The White Stripes)

DECEMBER 9th

On this date in:
1608	Poet John Milton was born in London.
1854	The poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was published in England.
1907	Christmas seals went on sale for the first time, at the Wilmington, Del., post office. The proceeds went to fight tuberculosis.
1940	British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II.
1941	China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
1958	The anti-Communist John Birch Society was formed in Indianapolis.
1975	President Gerald R. Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan authorization to prevent New York City from having to default.
1990	Solidarity founder Lech Walesa won Poland's presidential runoff by a landslide.
1993	The Air Force destroyed the first of 500 Minuteman II missile silos marked for elimination under an arms control treaty.
1994	President Bill Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders after she told a conference that masturbation should be discussed in school as a part of human sexuality.
1995	Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., was chosen to head the NAACP.
2000	The U.S. Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt in the Florida presidential vote count.
2002	United Airlines filed the biggest bankruptcy in aviation history after losing $4 billion in the previous two years.
2004	Canada's Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was constitutional.

Article of the day

U.S Marines storm Mogadishu, Somalia

On this day in 1992, 1,800 United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country.

Following centuries of colonial rule by countries including Portugal, Britain and Italy, Mogadishu became the capital of an independent Somalia in 1960. Less than 10 years later, a military group led by Major General Muhammad Siad Barre seized power and declared Somalia a socialist state. A drought in the mid-1970s combined with an unsuccessful rebellion by ethnic Somalis in a neighboring province of Ethiopia to deprive many of food and shelter. By 1981, close to 2 million of the country's inhabitants were homeless. Though a peace accord was signed with Ethiopia in 1988, fighting increased between rival clans within Somalia, and in January 1991 Barre was forced to flee the capital. Over the next 23 months, Somalia's civil war killed some 50,000 people; another 300,000 died of starvation as United Nations peacekeeping forces struggled in vain to restore order and provide relief amid the chaos of war.

In early December 1992, outgoing U.S. President George H.W. Bush sent the contingent of Marines to Mogadishu as part of a mission dubbed Operation Restore Hope. Backed by the U.S. troops, international aid workers were soon able to restore food distribution and other humanitarian aid operations. Sporadic violence continued, including the murder of 24 U.N. soldiers from Pakistan in 1993. As a result, the U.N. authorized the arrest of General Mohammed Farah Aidid, leader of one of the rebel clans. On October 3, 1993, during an unsuccessful attempt to make the arrest, rebels shot down two of the Marines' Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 U.S. soldiers.

As horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including footage of Aidid's supporters dragging the body of one dead soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering—-President Bill Clinton immediately gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit. When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. A ceasefire accord signed in Kenya in 2002 failed to put a stop to the violence, and though a new parliament was convened in 2004, rival factions in various regions of Somalia continue to struggle for control of the troubled nation.

Today Birthdays

Kirk Douglas turns 92 years old today.

AP Photo/Chris Pizzello Actor Kirk Douglas turns 92 years old today.

80 Dick Van Patten Actor ("Eight is Enough") 78 Buck Henry Actor, writer 74 Judi Dench Actress 70 Deacon Jones Football Hall of Famer 67 Beau Bridges Actor 67 Dan Hicks Jazz guitarist 66 Dick Butkus Football Hall of Famer 63 Michael Nouri Actor 61 Tom Daschle Former U.S. senator, D-S.D. 59 Tom Kite Golfer 58 Joan Armatrading Rock singer 56 Michael Dorn Actor 55 John Malkovich Actor 52 Sylvia Country singer 51 Donny Osmond Singer, game show host 50 Nick Seymour Rock musician (Crowded House) 49 Mario Cantone Comedian 47 Joe Lando Actor 43 Jerry Hughes Country musician (Yankee Grey) 41 Thomas Flowers Rock musician (Oleander) 40 Brian Bell Rock musician (Weezer) 39 Jakob Dylan Rock musician (Wallflowers) 39 Brian Hayes Country musician 39 Allison Smith Actress 38 Kara DioGuardi Songwriter, TV personality ("American Idol") 38 David Kersh Country singer 36 Tre Cool Rock musician (Green Day) 34 Canibus Rapper 32 Eric Zamora Saxophonist (Save Ferris) 31 Imogen Heap Rock singer 30 Jesse Metcalfe Actress 28 Simon Helberg Actor ("The Big Bang Theory")