Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
1861 - The Congressional Medal of Honor first authorized
1861 - Lord Lyons, the British minister to the United States, meets with United States Secretary of State William Seward concerning Confederate envoys James Mason and John Slidell, arrested by the United States Navy aboard the British mail steamer Trent in order to prevent war between the United States and the United Kingdom.
1872 - HMS Challenger sails from Portsmouth on the 4 year scientific expedition that would lay the foundation for the science of oceanography
# 1880 - Isle of Man becomes first political entity that allows women to vote
# 1891 - First basketball game played
# 1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie discover radium
# 1913 - First crossword puzzle published
# 1914 - First feature-length silent film comedy, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and Charles Chaplin, is released
1935 - First screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
1962 - Rondane National Park, the first national park in Norway, was established.
1968 - Apollo 8 launched
1979 - The United States government bails out the Chrysler Corporation
1988 - A terrorist bomb explodes and crashes Pan Am flight 103 a Boeing 747, over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270, including 11 on the ground
2012 - The Mayan calendar comes to an end… Experts disagree on whether this happens today or December 23, 2012

Births
1118 - Thomas Becket, lord chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1170)
1804 - Benjamin Disraeli, politician, writer (d. 1881)
1922 - Paul Winchell, ventriloquist
1926 - Joe Paterno, American football coach
1940 - Frank Zappa, musician (d. 1993)
1944 - Michael Tilson Thomas, American conductor
1946 - Carl Wilson, musician (“The Beach Boys”) (d. 1998)

Deaths
1807 - John Newton cleric, songwriter (Amazing Grace) (b. 1725)
1940 - F. Scott Fitzgerald, writer (b. 1896)
1945 - George S. Patton, U.S. general (b. 1885)

Holidays & observances
The summer solstice (Southern Hemisphere) or winter solstice (Northern Hemisphere), sometimes known as Yule, occurs on or very close to this date. It is an important festival in the Chinese calendar