**1863 **
Edited for correct year.
December 9, 1965: *A Charlie Brown Christmas * airs for the first time.
December 9, 1979: The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
I’ll go with today’s news. Hey, it’s already happened, so it’s history.
**December 9, 2017: **Australia becomes the 26th country to legalize same-sex marriage.
YAY!
December 10, 1941: Just 3 days after Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers torpedo and sink the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS *Repulse *. 840 lives are lost.
December 11, 1934: The Kerns Hotel Fire in Lansing, Michigan kills 32 and injures another 44. Seven of the dead are Michigan state legislators.
**December 12, 1917 **: The St-Michel-de Maurienne train derailmentin France kills over 700. Most of the dead are French troops returning home for Christmas. This is France’s deadliest train accident and one of the worst in history.
December 14, 1949: The Swift & Company Explosion in Sioux City, Iowa kills 21 and injures more than 90.
December 14, 1287: The Zuiderzee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, killing over 50,000 people.
December 15, 1967: The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapses during rush hour traffic. 46 are killed.
December 16, 1811: The first of the New Madrid Earthquakes strikes, this one centered in Northeast Arkansas. The estimated 7.5+ earthquake hits a little after 2 in the morning, followed by a jolt of similar size at about 7:30.
While thousands of more earthquakes would strike the area over the next few months, the quakes on January 23, 1812 and February 7, 1812 would also be of similar
tremendous strength. This part of the country was sparsely populated at the time. Were these quakes to happen today, the death toll would be very high. Experts believe massive earthquakes happen on the New Madrid fault every few hundred years. These are easily the strongest known earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States.
**December 16, 1979: **Dallas Cowboys QB Roger Staubach starts his last regular season game, and retires. One of the all-time great QBs hangs up his cleats. Wikipedia:
And I’m not even a Cowboys fan. In fact, I hate the Cowboys. But I respect greatness.
No rules infraction at all.
The challenge to me is to find an interesting event from history. While I always make sure I am posting on the anniversary day of the event in my time zone, I think finding something interesting, forgotten, or important is the key.
I also appreciated Roger Staubach and I was never a Cowboys fan. But who isn’t a fan of truly great players? There are many good ones, but few greats like Staubach.
Thanks. We ninja’d because my original post was the 15th, then I thought it broke the rules because someone else played for the 16th. And then when I double checked, Roger the Dodger’s last start was on the 16th so I changed the date.
Thanks!
December 16, 1773: The Boston Tea Party: Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
December 17, 1961: The Niteroi Circus Firein Brazil kills over 500, including many children. Blame for the fire has never been officially issued. This was the deadliest structural fire in Brazil’s history.
December 18, 1796: The *Courageux *sinks off Gibraltar killing 464.
December 18, 2016: at age 99, Sári Gábor (Zsa Zsa Gabor) dies.
December 19, 1907: The Darr Mine Disaster in Pennsylvania kills 239 miners. This is that state’s deadliest mine accident.
December 19, 1972: Apollo 17, the last of the Apollo missions and to date the last men to leave Earth orbit (Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt), returned to Earth.
Apollo 17 was the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight and the final manned launch of a Saturn V rocket.
Gene Cernan was the last man to stepon the Moon.