This Day in History – December 2
Today is the 336th day of 2013. There are 29 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1982: In the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implant a permanent artificial heart. Barney Clark, a retired dentist, lives 112 days with the device.
OTHER EVENTS
1804: Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor of France in Paris, taking the crown from attending Pope Pius VII.
1816: The first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opens for business.
1823: US President James Monroe declares the Monroe Doctrine which opposes European expansion.
1848: Austria’s Emperor Ferdinand I abdicates in favour of Franz Joseph I.
1851: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, president of France, suspends the constitution during a coup. Street fighting breaks out in Paris.
1852: Second French Empire is proclaimed with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor Napoleon III.
1856: France and Spain reach agreement on their frontiers.
1942: Nuclear chain reaction is demonstrated for the first time by scientists working on the Manhattan Project underneath the University of Chicago’s football stadium.
1950: United Nations agrees to hand over Eritrea to Ethiopia.
1954: US Senator Joseph McCarthy is censured by the Senate for browbeating Army personnel with his Communist witch hunts.
1960: The Archbishop of Canterbury visits Pope John XXIII. The two heads of the two major denominations break a
400-year-old tradition set in the 1500s by Britain’s King Henry VIII and Pope Leo X.
1961: Britain refuses Uganda’s request for independence; Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares himself a Marxist-Leninist who will lead Cuba to Communism.
1969: The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its debut as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, fly from Seattle to New York City.
1971: Britain terminates all treaties with crucial states in Gulf, leading to formation of United Arab Emirates.
1988: Arab diplomats introduce resolution in United Nations to move General Assembly to Geneva so PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat can address the world body.
1994: Ferry carrying more than 600 people collides with a freighter and sinks in Manila Bay, Philippines. Sixty bodies are recovered, 85 people are missing.
1995: A Singapore court sentences former trader Nick Leeson to 6 1/2 years in prison in the crash of Britain’s oldest merchant bank.
2000: A German court rules that prostitution cannot be considered illegal if it is done willingly without criminal ties.
2001: Enron Corp, the largest United States energy-trading company, files for bankruptcy protection, dealing a blow to financial markets worldwide.
It is the largest bankruptcy in US history.
2006: Fidel Castro fails to attend a military parade marking the 50th anniversary of the date he and his rebels launched their revolution, fuelling speculation that the ailing Cuban leader may not return to power.
2007: Choe Jeong-in and Cho Ah-ra become the first South Koreans to hold a wedding ceremony in the communist country North Korea. They marry at the Diamond Mountain resort where they met.
2010: Swedish authorities win a court ruling in their bid to arrest the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for questioning in a rape case.