Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1640 - Portugal regains its independence from Spain and João IV of Portugal becomes king
1822 - Peter I is crowned as Emperor of Brazil
1824 - U.S. presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task to decide the winner (as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution)
1835 - Hans Christian Andersen publishes first book of fairy tales
1884 - American Old West - Near Frisco, New Mexico (now Reserve, New Mexico), deputy sheriff Elfego Baca holds off a gang of 80 Texan cowboys who want to kill him for arresting cowboy Charles McCarthy (the cowboys were terrorizing the area's Hispanos and Baca was working against them)
1885 - Although the exact date is unknown, the US Patent Office acknowledges December 1st, 1885 as the first day Dr Pepper was served
1913 - Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line, reducing chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes (although Ford was not the first to use an assembly line, his successful adoption of one did spark an era of mass production)
1918 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed
1919 - Lady Astor becomes first female member of the British Parliament to take her seat (she had been elected to that position on November 28)
1941 - World War II: Former mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, and the director of the Office of Civilian Defense, sign an order creating the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) as the civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force (in April 1943 the CAP was placed under the jurisdiction of the Army Air Force)
1952 - The New York Daily News carries a front page story announcing that Christine Jorgensen, a transsexual woman in Denmark became the recipient of the first successful sexual reassignment operation
1955 - American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws (Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr. later led the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott as a result)
1959 - Cold War: Antarctic Treaty signed - 12 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign a landmark treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on that continent (this was the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War)
1969 - Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II (on January 4, 1970, the New York Times ran a long article, “Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random”)
1973 - Papua New Guinea gains self government from Australia
1987 - NASA announces the names of four companies who were awarded contracts to help build the International Space Station: Boeing Aerospace, General Electric’s Astro-Space Division, McDonnell Douglas, and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell
1990 - Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first ground connection between the island of Great Britain and the mainland of Europe since the last ice age
1991 - Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union

Births
1083 - Anna Comnena, Byzantine historian (d. 1153)
1886 - Rex Stout, author (d. 1975)
1911 - Walter Alston, baseball manager (d. 1984)
1912 - Minoru Yamasaki, American architect (d. 1986)
1913 - Mary Martin, actor, singer (d. 1990)
1935 - Lou Rawls, singer
1939 - Lee Trevino, golfer
1945 - Bette Midler, actress
1946 - Gilbert O’Sullivan, singer
1950 - Keith Thibodeaux, drummer and actor (“Little Ricky” on I Love Lucy)
1951 - Jaco Pastorius, bassist (d. 1987)
1976 - Matthew Shepard, murder victim (d. 1998)

Deaths
1973 - David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel
1975 - Nellie Fox, Baseball Hall of Famer (b. 1927)
1975 - Anna E. Roosevelt, radio personality (b. 1906)
1985 - Alvin Ailey, dancer, choreographer

Holidays and observances
Ancient Latvia - Barbes Diena observed
Feast day of St Eligius
Romania - Union Day (the national holiday)
World AIDS Day