World/nation trivia 11-30-24

The week of Dec. 1-7

Dec. 1:

1824, the presidential election was turned over to the U.S. House of Representatives after none of the candidates (John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay) won more than 50% of the electoral vote. Despite Jackson winning the most electoral votes, Adams would ultimately win the presidency.

1955, Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus; the incident sparked a yearlong boycott of the buses and helped fuel the U.S. civil rights movement.

1991, Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Soviet Union.

2009, President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 more U.S. troops into the war in Afghanistan but promised during a speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to begin withdrawals in 18 months.

Dec. 2:

1804, Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France in a coronation ceremony at Notre Dame de Paris cathedral.

1823, President James Monroe outlined his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.

1942, an artificially created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated for the first time at the University of Chicago.

1982, in the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implanted a permanent artificial heart in the chest of retired dentist Dr. Barney Clark, who lived 112 days with the device.

Dec. 3:

1967, a surgical team in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the donated organ from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old bank clerk who had died in a traffic accident.

1984, a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India, causing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 deaths and more than 500,000 injuries.

2015, Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered the armed services to open all military jobs to women, removing the final barriers that had kept women from serving in combat.

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, dubbed the “Million Dollar Quartet,” gathered for the first and only time for a jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.

1991, after being abducted and held for nearly seven years as a hostage by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson was released from captivity.

2018, long lines of people wound through the Capitol Rotunda to view the casket of former President George H.W. Bush.

Dec. 5:

1848, in an address to Congress, President James K. Polk sparked the Gold Rush of ’49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.

1933, national Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.

2013, Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa’s first Black president, died at age 95.

2017, Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan resigned from Congress after a nearly 53-year career, becoming the first Capitol Hill politician to lose his job amid the sexual misconduct allegations sweeping through the nation’s workplaces.

Dec. 6:

1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was ratified as Georgia became the 27th state to endorse it.

1907, the worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurred as at least 361 men and boys died in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia.

1973, House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew.

1998, in Venezuela, former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier, was elected president.

Dec. 7:

1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1941, the Empire of Japan launched an air raid on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The United States declared war against Japan the following day.

1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people.

2004, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

– Associated Press