Today in History Dec. 12
Today is Tuesday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2017. There are 19 days left in the year. Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, begins at sunset.
On Dec. 12, 1917, during World War I, a train carrying some 1,000 French troops from the Italian front derailed while descending a steep hill in Modane; at least half of the soldiers were killed in France’s greatest rail disaster. Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.
In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1897, “The Katzenjammer Kids,” the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, made its debut in the New York Journal.
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oscar Straus to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor; Straus became the first Jewish Cabinet member.
In 1946, a United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of the U.N.’s headquarters.
In 1947, the United Mine Workers union disaffiliated from the American Federation of Labor.
In 1963, Kenya became independent of Britain.
In 1977, the dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” a Paramount Pictures release starring John Travolta, premiered in New York.
In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
“Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.”
– Ellen Glasgow, American author (1874-1945)