30 December, 1922

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is officially founded.

In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism.

During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent three-year Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin dominated the soviet forces, a coalition of workers’ and soldiers’ committees that called for the establishment of a socialist state in the former Russian Empire

28 December, 1975

The “Hail Mary” pass is born!

Dallas beats Minnesota on a Staubach-Pearson miracle pass.

The term "Hail Mary" was used by Staubach when the quarterback spoke with sportswriters following the game. Staubach reminisced to the Dallas Morning News in 2010 about how his pass got its name.
"I was kidding around with the writers," Staubach said. "Then they asked the question. I said, 'I got knocked down on the play...I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.'"

22 December, 1932

The Mummy strikes!

The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, is released.

20 December, 1990

The first website on the World Wide Web goes online:

12 December, 2000

Bush v. Gore is resolved by the Supreme Court

Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately.^[1] On December 9, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay for Bush, with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm."^[1] Oral arguments were scheduled for December 11.

In a per curiam decision, the Court first ruled 7–2 (Justices Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting), strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. Specifically, the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. (The case had also been argued on the basis of Article II jurisdictional grounds, which found favor with only Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and William Rehnquist.) Second, the Court ruled 5–4 against the remedy, proposed by Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter, of sending the case back to Florida to complete the recount using a uniform statewide standard before the scheduled December 18 meeting of Florida's electors in Tallahassee.^[1] The majority held that no alternative method could be established within the discretionary December 12 "safe harbor" deadline set by Title 3 of the United States Code (3 U.S.C.), § 5, which the Florida Supreme Court had stated that the Florida Legislature intended to meet.^[2] That deadline arrived two hours after the release of the Court's decision. The Court, stating that not meeting the "safe harbor" deadline would therefore violate the Florida Election Code, rejected an extension of the deadline.

11 December, 1936

King Edward VIII announces he his abdicating the British throne to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson.

Great tux.

10 December, 2001

The world premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

09 December, 1965

The first ever “Peanuts” special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” airs for the first time.

08 December, 1980

Beatles fans mourn the death of John Lennon by murder. This picture was taken by Annie Leibovitz on the day of his death.

07 December, 1941

Well, if you’ve been paying attention the last few days, you knew this was coming.

TORA! TORA! TORA!

And with those words, the attack begins.

“A day that will live in infamy!”

07 | December | 2008 | Today's History Lesson (wordpress.com)

At just a few minutes before 8:00 am, the guns on the Japanese fighters started blazing and the bombs and torpedoes started falling.

Ninety minutes later, after two separate waves of attacks, it was over…for both sides.

As far as the U.S. was concerned, it was a huge disaster.  Yamamoto’s goal of tactical surprise was perfectly executed.  The various groups of planes arrived over their targets with almost surgical precision (if air attacks can be assessed that way), making it nearly impossible for the U.S. soldiers to focus on one target.  What’s more, the Japanese had off-loaded handful of midget submarines early on the 7th.  At least one had been discovered and sunk several hours before the attacks began, but still no serious alarms were raised.  As the smoke rose over Oahu, five battleships rested on Pearl’s harbor floor, three cruisers were damaged or sunk, and three destroyers were damaged or sunk, along with a handful of other ships.  More than 300 aircraft had been wrecked or damaged, and 2,400 people had taken their last breaths, with another 1,300 wounded.

FDR’s remarks:

The commander in charge of the attack, Admiral Yamamoto is alleged to have said afterwards:

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

I highly recommend the movie I referenced earlier, as well.

06 December, 1941

The Japanese Fleet lead by Admiral Yamamoto abord the Akagi (pictured above) is almost to Pearl Harbor and America has completely misread Hirohito’s intentions.

FDR to Japanese emperor: "Prevent further death and destruction" – HISTORY

President Roosevelt—convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that the Japanese fleet is headed for Thailand, not the United States—telegrams Emperor Hirohito with the request that “for the sake of humanity,” the emperor intervene “to prevent further death and destruction in the world.”

The Royal Australian Air Force had sighted Japanese escorts, cruisers, and destroyers on patrol near the Malayan coast, south of Cape Cambodia. An Aussie pilot managed to radio that it looked as if the Japanese warships were headed for Thailand—just before he was shot down by the Japanese. Back in England, Prime Minister Churchill called a meeting of his chiefs of staff to discuss the crisis. While reports were coming in describing Thailand as the Japanese destination, they began to question whether it could have been a diversion. British intelligence had intercepted the Japanese code “Raffles,” a warning to the Japanese fleet to be on alert—but for what?

It was a bluff.

Meanwhile, 600 miles northwest of Hawaii, Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, announced to his men: “The rise or fall of the empire depends upon this battle. Everyone will do his duty with utmost efforts.” Thailand was, in fact, a bluff.

05 December, 1941

The Kido Butai  is approaching Pearl Harbor!

The Kido Butai has been making it’s way toward it’s December 7th destination: Pearl Harbor.

So far it has been quietly making its way across the Pacific. The U.S. is apparently unaware of the fleet.

That all became at risk on this day in 1941.

Why? Because a Russian trawler got in the way and almost screwed up everything.

A fleet of this size is nearly impossible to hide, but Nagumo somehow managed…until December 5, 1941, when they ran smack-dab into the Russian transport trawler Uritsky.  Instantly, the intrigue began to build.  Russia was at war with Japan’s ally, Germany, but Russia was not in open conflict with Japan, thanks in part to the Tripartite Pact, which allowed Japan to maintain its non-aggression pact with Russia.  Furthermore, Japan wasn’t really interested in open war with the Soviets…they were on there way to Hawai’i to try and stifle an open war with the United States.

There’s more.  Some have said (though I’m not sure it’s been proven) that the Uritsky notified Russian officials of the Kido Butai (roughly translated as “Mobile Force”), who then quickly told the Japanese that allowing a certain transport to continue floating would insure that nobody, particularly the United States, was informed of a certain carrier force moving east.

But it wasn’t just about protecting a transport carrying a few tanks.  Joseph Stalin had good reason to keep quiet about the fleet, too.  He was in a desperate situation with the Germans (as we saw just yesterday), and military moves he was making (which we’ll discuss shortly) meant he really didn’t want a war with Japan, which would tie up troops in the Far East.  What’s more, while Stalin was a pretty good guesser, it didn’t take a scientist to see that the Kido Butai heading east pretty much meant one thing:  Pearl Harbor.  So Stalin bet that an attack was coming…an attack that would bring America into the war, which he really did want.

So Nagumo allowed the Uritsky to continue unmolested to its destination:  Vladivostok.  And the Russians apparently kept quiet, too, as the Kido Butai closed in on sleepy Sunday morning Oahu.

TL;DR – Rumor: The Russians knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor and did nothing. Two days later, the U.S. Navy would suffer for the Russian silence.

04 December, 1954

Time to go grab a Whopper!

The first Burger King opens in Miami, Florida.

03 December, 1979

The Who concert tragedy in Cincinnati. I lived near Cincinnati at the time. I had friends there. You can’t imagine how bad this was.

It was such a big deal, they made a WKRP episode on it.

02 December, 1941

Climb Mount Niitaka.

The stage is set for war. Japan is going to war with the United States. In 5 days.

(actually 6, because at the time the fleet was on the other side of the International Date Line)

So on December 2, 1941, the coded message, Niitakayama Nobore (“Climb Mount Niitaka“), arrived on Nagumo’s flagship.  The Admiral then opened a set of top secret documents which confirmed that Japan would be going to war with the United States, Britain, and Holland.  It also gave a date for the opening of hostilities…December 8th (the 7th on the Pearl Harbor side of the International Date Line).

1 December, 2019

Earliest traceable patient, a 55-year-old man, develops symptoms of a novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in Wuhan, China

 

30 November, 1993

Schindler’s List released. I haven’t watched that movie in forever. I should watch it again.

Schindler's List is a 1993 American epic historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian. It is based on the 1982 historical fiction novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. The film follows Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as SS officer Amon Göth and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.

29 November, 1935

Schrödinger's cat!

This thought experiment was published on this day in 1935.

Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.

28 November, 1717

Queen Anne’s Revenge!

The ship that would be known as Queen Anne's Revenge was a 200-ton vessel believed to have been built in 1710. She was handed over to René Duguay-Trouin and employed in his service for some time before being converted into a slave ship, then operated by the leading slave trader René Montaudin of Nantes, until sold in 1713 in Peru or Chile. She was briefly re-acquired by the French Navy in November 1716, but was sold by them for commerce five months later in France, again for use as a slaver.^[7] She was captured by Blackbeard and his pirates on 28 November 1717, near the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies.^[8]

27 November, 1896

Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) by Richard Strauss, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel, debuts in Frankfurt.

This was made famous as the theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey