In 1693 the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA was granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II. In 1837 Richard Johnson becomes the first VP of the US to be chosen by the US Senate – he fell one vote short of getting the electoral votes outright (as running mate of Van Buren) but then the Senate voted to seat him. And in 1865 Delaware refused to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution – later in the year- Dec 6th the Amendment was ratified by the required number of states.
This date had liberation, execution, and restrictions. In 1817 Las Heras completes his crossing of the Andes with an army to join San Martin and liberate Chile from Spain. In 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots was executed by Queen Elizabeth I, on suspicion of treason. And in 1887 The Dawes Act authorized the President to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual (nonnative) allotments.
In a timely development, Sandford Fleming first proposed the adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute way back in 1879. In 1960 the Hollywood Walk of Fame was established. And in 1974 the Skylab 4 crew left the station after 84 days in space – they would be the last crew on Skylab.
There were two American generals born on this date: William Tecumseh Sherman in 1820 and Richard S Ewell in 1817, though Gen Ewell joined and fought with the Confederates in the Civil War, while Sherman famously fought against the Confederates. There were also two well-known authors born on this date – Jules Verne, the great French science fiction writer (visionary) in 1828 – and American legal thriller writer John Grisham in 1955.
The designer/inventor of the Periodic table of elements, Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, was born on this date in 1834. The co-creator (with Bob Kane) of Batman, Bill Finger, was born in 1914. And the composer of the soundtracks for many, many movies – including Star Wars – John Williams -was born in 1932. Williams was also the successor to the amazing Arthur Feidler as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1980 (remained there until 1993).
Two more musicians were also born on this date – one mellow and one crashingly loud – Dan Seals (of the Seals and Croft duo) in 1948 and Vince Neil (Motley Crue) in 1961.
We said farewell to 3 tsars and one VP on this date: Tsar Alexis in 1676, Tsar Ivan V in 1696, and Peter the Great in 1725 – constituting 3 out of the four tsars in the time period 1645-1725. And in 1936 President Hoover’s VP Charles Curtis died. We also bid farewell in 1959 to William Donovan, head of the OSS, predecessor to the CIA. Prior to his heading up the OSS in WWII, he served in combat in WWI and WWII and with General Pershing in the pursuit of Pancho Villa.
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