December 20

It’s Go Caroling Day

ON THIS DAY…

1192 Richard the Lionheart was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty with Saladin ending the crusade
1803 Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans
1860 South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the U.S.
1892 Phileas Fogg completes around world trip (according to Verne)
1915 The last Australian troops are evacuated from Gallipoli
1917 Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, is founded
1920 Bob Hope becomes an American citizen
1929 Boston bookseller James De Lacey is sentenced to one month in jail and fined $500 for selling Lady Chatterley’s Lover
1929 Old Arizona, the first full-length motion picture to be filmed outdoors, is released
1951 Nuclear power is first harvested when EBR-1 (located in the desert about 18 miles southeast of Arco, Idaho) powers four light bulbs
1955 Cardiff is proclaimed as the capital city of Wales
1968 The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, CA

BORN:

1922 George Roy Hill, film director (The Sting, The Great Waldo Pepper)
1946 Uri Geller, psychic
1952 Jenny Agutter, actress (Logan’s Run, Equus)
1957 Billy Bragg, punk-folk musician
1970 Nicole DeBoer, actress (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Dead Zone)

DIED:

1812 Sacagawea, Shoshone guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, dies
1968 John Steinbeck, author (Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men), dies at 66
1973 Bobby Darin, singer/actor (Captain Newman, M.D., Pressure Point), dies at 37
1996 Carl Sagan, scientist/author (Cosmos, Contact), dies at 62