Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
283 - St Gaius becomes Pope
384 - St Siricius becomes Pope
1777 - France became the first nation to recognize the United States of America
1830 - Santa Marta, Colombia Simon Bolivar dies
1843 - A Christmas Carol, a fictional short story by Charles Dickens, was first published
1903 - First powered flight, by the Wright Brothers
1935 - First flight of the Douglas DC-3
1982 - Tootsie opens in theaters, starring Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Bill Murray, Sydney Pollack, George Gaynes, and Geena Davis
1989 - The first half-hour length episode of The Simpsons debuts with their Christmas special, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”
2003 - First supersonic flight by Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne
2003 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the third and final Lord of the Rings movie to open in theaters

Births
1770 - Ludwig van Beethoven, composer (d. 1827)
1778 - Humphry Davy, chemist (d. 1829)
1796 - Thomas Chandler Haliburton, novelist (d. 1865)
1807 - John Greenleaf Whittier, poet, abolitionist (d. 1892)
1894 - Arthur Fiedler, American conductor (d. 1979
1906 - Simo Häyhä, most successful sniper in history (d. 2002)
1908 - Willard Frank Libby, physicist and chemist, inventor of radiocarbon dating (d. 1980)
1968 - Paul Tracy, Canadian Champ Car driver

Deaths
1830 - Simón Bolívar, Latin American politician and activist (b. 1783)
1907 - William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, physicist (b. 1824)
1957 - Dorothy L. Sayers, writer (b. 1893)
1964 - Victor Franz Hess, American physicist (b. 1883)