Dec. 4
1783: Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his Continental Army officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York.
1956: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins — later dubbed the “Million Dollar Quartet” — gathered for their first and only jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.
1991: Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson was freed after nearly seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Dec. 5
1848: President James K. Polk, in an address to Congress, confirmed gold had been discovered in California, igniting the Gold Rush of ’49.
1933: Prohibition ended as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, repealing the 18th.
1952: The Great Smog of London settled over the city for five days, a toxic haze blamed for thousands of deaths.
2013: Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa’s first black president, died at age 95.
Dec. 6
1865: The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified when Georgia became the 27th state to approve it.
1923: A presidential address was broadcast nationally on radio for the first time as Calvin Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.
1969: A free Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway in California turned deadly when four people died, including one man fatally stabbed by a Hells Angels member working event security.
Dec. 7
1787: Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1941: Japan launched a surprise air attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The United States declared war on Japan the next day.
1982: Charlie Brooks Jr. became the first U.S. inmate executed by lethal injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas.
Dec. 8
1941: The United States entered World War II as Congress declared war on Japan, one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1980: Former Beatle John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment building by Mark David Chapman.
1987: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a landmark treaty at the White House ordering the elimination of intermediate-range missiles.
Dec. 9
1965: “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the first animated TV special based on Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts,” premiered on CBS.
1979: Scientists declared smallpox eradicated worldwide, wiping out a disease that killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century.
1990: Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa won Poland’s first free presidential election since 1926.
Dec. 10
1898: The Treaty of Paris was signed, formally ending the Spanish-American War.
1964: Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, saying he did so “with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.”
1906: President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win a Nobel Prize, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for helping negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.
1967: Soul singer Otis Redding, 26, and six others died when their plane crashed into a Wisconsin lake.
