Dec. 11
1936: Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.
1978: Nearly $6 million in cash and jewelry was stolen from the Lufthansa cargo terminal at New York’s JFK Airport, a record-setting heist later immortalized in “Goodfellas.”
2008: Former Nasdaq chairman Bernie Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that wiped out the life savings of thousands of people and wrecked charities.
Dec. 12
1870: Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.
1963: The East African nation of Kenya declared independence from Britain; it became a republic exactly a year later.
1985: An Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killing 248 American soldiers and eight crew members.
Dec. 13
1862: Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside launched failed frontal assaults against entrenched Confederate troops at the Battle of Fredericksburg; the battered Northern army withdrew two days later after suffering heavy casualties.
1937: Japanese forces seized the Chinese city of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War and began a weekslong massacre that killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 civilians, prisoners of war and soldiers.
2003: Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole beneath a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.
Dec. 14
1799: The first president of the United States, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Virginia, home at age 67.
1903: Wilbur Wright attempted to fly the Wright Flyer on North Carolina’s Outer Banks but climbed too steeply, stalled and crashed into the sand. Three days later, on Dec. 17, his brother Orville made history with the first successful controlled, powered flight.
1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team reached the South Pole, becoming the first to do so.
Dec. 15
1791: The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect after being ratified by Virginia.
1890: Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, South Dakota, during a confrontation with Indian agency police.
1939: The Civil War epic “Gone with the Wind,” starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, premiered in Atlanta.
Dec. 16
1773: The Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped more than 300 chests of tea to protest tea taxes.
1907: Sixteen U.S. Navy battleships, later known as the “Great White Fleet,” departed Hampton Roads, Virginia, on a 14-month, round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.
1944: The World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise attack on Allied troops through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Dec. 17
1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful manned, powered airplane flights near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.
1777: France became one of the first nations to officially recognize the independence of the United States.
1989: “The Simpsons” debuted on Fox television; it remains the longest-running animated U.S. TV series.
