Today in History

[TimSJ]

Dec 19 1918
Robert Ripley began his "Believe It or Not" column in The New York Globe .

Dec 19 1941
Twelve days after Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt under authority of Congress, created the Office of Censorship. The bureau had discretion over communications with foreign countries. Participation by domestic publishers was "voluntary".

Dec 19 1971
A Clockwork Orange opens, originally given an X rating. Censors objected more to the sex scenes than the orgies of ultraviolence, which is rather odd. Director Stanley Kubrik later earns an R by removing some of the smuttier footage.

Dec 19 1991
Yankee's pitcher Steve Howe arrested for criminal possession of cocaine. It's merely one of NINE TIMES this has happened (and seven suspensions, plus one drunk driving arrest.)

Dec 19 1997
Disgruntled postal worker Anthony Deculit enters a Milwaukee post office at 12:45 A.M., shoots his supervisor in the right eye, and kills a fellow coworker. The supervisor had written Deculit up for sleeping on the job. After the shootings he rendered himself dead with the 9mm solution, a shot through the mouth.

Dec 19 1997
The pilot of a SilkAir plane deliberately flies into a mangrove swamp in Indonesia, committing suicide and killing all 104 people aboard. The pilot, Captain Tsu Way Ming, was in debt and had personal problems, had taken a $3M insurance policy prior to the crash. To cover his tracks, he disconnected the flight recorder prior to downing the aircraft.

[TimSJ]

Dec 20 1803
The United States purchased the Louisiana Territories from France for $15 million.

Dec 20 1957
Elvis receives orders from the draft board to serve in the United States Army, which to his credit he does without complaint.

Dec 20 1971
Talk show host Larry King, host of CNN's Larry King Live, arrested in Miami on charges of grand larceny. He must have been in-between wives.

Dec 20 1973
Basque separatists assassinate the Spanish Prime Minister, Luis Carrero Blanco, by placing a mine under his automobile. The Basques are a non-Spanish ethnic group in Spain; nobody knows where they really came from.

Dec 20 1989
US invades Panama! Smack that dictator!

Dec 20 1996
Carl Sagan, the effervescently lugubrious astronomer, dead of bone marrow disease at age 62.

Dec 20 1997
Sotheby's auctions off the loincloth worn by Kirk Douglas in the 1960 film Spartacus for $2,990.

[fanforever1986]

Dec 20 1995

Young prospect Jarome Iginla traded to the Calgary Flames in exchange for Joe Nieuwendyk from the Dallas Stars.

...It was a pretty good trade, I guess.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by fanforever1986

Dec 20 1995

Young prospect Jarome Iginla traded to the Calgary Flames in exchange for Joe Nieuwendyk from the Dallas Stars.

...It was a pretty good trade, I guess.

Give me a break . . . we all know that the feature piece in that deal was Corey Millen

[Frank the Tank]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Give me a break . . . we all know that the feature piece in that deal was Corey Millen

Haha! I remember going "Jerome who?" and watching the World Juniors and promptly getting VERY excited about the trade.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Dec 20 1973
Basque separatists assassinate the Spanish Prime Minister, Luis Carrero Blanco, by placing a mine under his automobile. The Basques are a non-Spanish ethnic group in Spain; nobody knows where they really came from.

The Basques didn't come from anywhere, they are considered indigenous and original Europeans. Their homeland is in Spain and France. They are genetically, closely related to the Welsh and Irish.

[TimSJ]

Dec 21 1937
Jane Fonda's birthday. Jane, an anti-war activist, also holds the title "Miss Army Recruiting" of 1965.

Dec 21 1945
World War II General George Patton dies in a car accident at Heidelberg, Germany.

Dec 21 1970
President Nixon meets with prescription drug addict Elvis Presley at the White House to discuss The King's becoming a special drug enforcement agent. He presents Nixon with a pistol, and receives a special DEA badge in return.

Dec 21 1971
Former Nazi Kurt Waldheim chosen to serve as United Nations Secretary General, the fourth to serve in that position (but the first Nazi). He paves the way for a New World Order.

Dec 21 1975
Terrorist Carlos the Jackal takes hostage the 11 oil ministers at an OPEC meeting in Vienna. The ministers are released after a ransom is paid, and Carlos escapes. The Jackal is not captured until he enters a Sudanese hospital in 1994 for a testicle operation.

Dec 21 1978
John Wayne Gacy arrested in Des Plaines, IL after remains of some of the 33 men and boys he had killed are discovered on his land.

Dec 21 1988
Pan Am flight 103 detonates over Lockerbie Scotland, by means of a remote control radio bomb. All 259 aboard are killed as well as 11 on the ground struck by falling detritus. The PFLP faction of the PLO was responsible, assisted by Libyan sponsorship.

Dec 21 1991
Charles Barkley arrested on charges of battery and disorderly conduct, Milwaukee. He had punched a heckler, but was acquitted.

Dec 21 2012
The Mayan "long count" calendar is based on great cycles of 5125 years, the current cycle ending on this day in 2012. Endings of cycles are punctuated by cataclysmic singularities on a deluge scale, so be prepared. This is the end of time!

[TimSJ]

Dec 22 1895
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen made the first X-ray. It was of his wife's hand.

Dec 22 1955
The corpse of Evita Peron is stolen by anti-Peronistas.

Dec 22 1972
An earthquake destroys the city of Managua, Nicaragua, leaving 6,000 dead.

Dec 22 1984
Bernhard Goetz shoots 4 teenage boys on the NYC subway after one of them asks him for money.

Dec 22 1996
An alien cadaver of height 5 centimeters is found at the Kibbutz Achihod, Ahyud Israel. Scientists at Israel's Technion Institute in Hafnia determine that not enough material is present to conduct "proper tests" but the alien's composition is chiefly cow manure.

Dec 22 2001
Richard Reid attempts to blow up an American Airlines transatlantic flight by igniting a plastic explosive concealed in his shoe. Other passengers beat the living daylights out of him.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Dec 22 2001
Richard Reid attempts to blow up an American Airlines transatlantic flight by igniting a plastic explosive concealed in his shoe. Other passengers beat the living daylights out of him.

I laughed when I read this, because while plastic explosives will make a nice BBQ starter when lit with a match or a lighter, you need a electrical charge to make it explode.

Another example of training meets stupidity

[Looger]

yep, the new wave of 70 IQ terrorist patsies...

richard reed crashed at the same brixton mosque as zaccharius massoui, another 70-80 IQ borderline psychotic low-grade subject...

[604flames]

12.22.1996: exactly ten yrs ago today, Flames win 7-2 in their first-ever visit to Phoenix. Titov nets a hat-trick, and a young Jarome Iginla scores his 12th of the year. Other Flames goals: Todd Hlushko, Fleury, Ronnie Stern, and Dwayne Roloson picks up the win in goal.

[Azure]

Interesting thread guys...keep it up.

[TimSJ]

Dec 23 1888
After an argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh takes a razor and removes a portion of his left ear. Their quarrel regarded the prostitutes in Arles who seemed to prefer Gauguin over Van Gogh; the painter delivered his ear to one Rachel, who preferred Van Gogh. She fainted.

Dec 23 1948
Japanese Premier Tojo and 6 others hanged by the War Crimes Commission at Sugamo Prison, Tokyo, for the crime of starting an aggressive war. As he drops from the gallows, he screams "Banzai!"

Dec 23 1968
The first US incident of motion sickness in orbit. Was it Borman, Lovell, or Anders?

Dec 23 1972
Magnitude 6.25 Earthquake destroys central Managua Nicaragua, 10,000 die.

Dec 23 1975
Leftist members of November 17 faction murder Athens CIA station chief Richard Welch.

Dec 23 1985
In a school playground, James Vance presses a shotgun to his chin and pulls the trigger. He and cohort Raymond Belknap had forged a suicide pact while listening to Stained Class by Judas Priest. But where Belknap succeeded, Vance fails. The dumb**** survives, destroying his face. He later uses his disfigurement to his advantage, terrorizing small children on his bicycle. Both kids' parents file suit against the band, but a judge ultimately rejects their subliminal message theory. Vance dies from painkillers on Thanksgiving three years later.

Dec 23 1994
Actor/dumbass Christian Slater arrested while trying to board a plane with a semiautomatic firearm. Community service, boy.

Dec 23 1995
Bodies of 16 members of the Solar Temple cult who had committed suicide are found on a plateau in the French Alps. Their bodies are charred and arranged in a star formation. Causes of death included stabbing, asphyxiation, gunshot, and poisoning. In 1994, 53 other members had suicided in similar fashion.

Dec 23 1997
Mayor Craig Johnson of Snow Hill, MD is arrested on two counts of misconduct in office, after he allows the squad car issued to him to be photographed for a pornographic Internet website "Wetlands". One of the pictures shows Cherie Messner, wife of the Wetlands operator, apparently urinating on the squad car in question.

[604flames]

12.23.2005: Tony Amonte scores the shootout winner (whoulda thunk it, Flames win a shootout) by deking Alex Auld out of his pads. Flames win at GM Place, 6-5.

[Looger]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

Dec 23 1985
In a school playground, James Vance presses a shotgun to his chin and pulls the trigger. He and cohort Raymond Belknap had forged a suicide pact while listening to Stained Class by Judas Priest. But where Belknap succeeded, Vance fails. The dumb**** survives, destroying his face. He later uses his disfigurement to his advantage, terrorizing small children on his bicycle. Both kids' parents file suit against the band, but a judge ultimately rejects their subliminal message theory. Vance dies from painkillers on Thanksgiving three years later.

i believe this story was the basis for the arse-face character in the comic 'preacher', they had one issue 'the story of arse-face' that mirrored this incident except it was a tribute suicide to kurt cobain.

arse-face is kind of a sidekick afterwards but no-one really understands anything he says, the shotgun blast went through the top of his face and took most of said face wth it.

i'd never heard that this was a real incident, true life is stranger than fiction i suppose...

[TimSJ]

Dec 24 1865
Southern whitefolk unite together to form a service organization wherein they consort with other southern whitefolk. Members participate in festive cruciform fire ceremonies and lively butcherings of blacks. By the 1920's membership in the Ku Klux Klan reaches an astonishing 2 million.

Dec 24 1954
Rock musician Johnny Ace plays a little .45 calibre solitaire (Russian Roulette) at City Auditorium in Houston after a concert. Blammo. He thought it would impress his girlfriend, perhaps it did.

Dec 24 1985
Fidel Castro announces that he has given up cigars.

Dec 24 1989
Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega seeks asylum at the Papal Nunciature. American troops try blasting him with rock music and the sounds of rabbits being slaughtered, but he takes two weeks to emerge. The isthmus groundhog does not see his shadow and is taken by the US Army to Florida lockup where he still resides.

Dec 24 1997
It is revealed that actor Woody Allen (age 62) was married to his adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (age 27) in Venice, Italy yesterday. She becomes her own stepmother, and Woody his own neurotic son in law.

Dec 24 1997
Disgruntled (former) postal worker David Lee Jackson takes seven hostages at a Denver mail sorting facility. He holds them for over nine hours before surrendering to police. Jackson had been fired 18 months previously for threatening his superior.

[TimSJ]

Dec 25 272
First official public celebration of Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, a pagan Roman holiday that was later co-opted by Christians to celebrate the birth of their favorite Jew. Turning the holiday into "Christmas" (in 336 AD) was part of a pattern of the church stealing various pagan festivals and feast days.

Dec 25 1818
"Silent Night" was performed for the first time, at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorff, Austria.

Dec 25 1926
Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan.

Dec 25 1946
W.C. Fields dead at 67, due to the cumulative effects of his drinking and lifestyle.

Dec 25 1989
An eager firing squad executes Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceaucescu and his wife Elena on live television. Ceaucescu had run Romania as his private communist fiefdom, garnering the animosity of nearly the entire population. The new government abolishes capital punishment shortly thereafter.

Dec 25 1995
Rat pack member Dean Martin dead at 78, a martini glass in his hand.

[Looger]

wow, lots of post-office dates!

yep, noriega, not paying his cut to the drug masters...

[pope04]

Charlie Chaplin can be added to Dino and W.C. to those that passed away on Christmas Day.

[TimSJ]

Dec 26 1893
Dictator Mao Tse-tung born in Hunan province.

Dec 26 1980
Richard Chase, the "Vampire of Sacramento" who drank the blood of two of his six victims, commits suicide on death row by overdosing on hoarded medication.

Dec 26 1985
"Gorillas in the Mist" author Dian Fossey killed with machete in Africa.

Dec 26 1996
Six-year-old beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey, was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, CO.

Dec 26 2004
An Indian Ocean 9.15 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra unleashes a series of powerful tsunamis. Just under 230,000 people are either killed or missing. The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake affects a huge geographical area from Indonesia to Bangladesh to Somalia even triggering earthquakes in Alaska.