Today is Wednesday, Dec. 20, the 354th day of 2017 with 11 to follow.
The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Venus. The evening stars are Mercury and Uranus.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include baseball Hall of Fame member Branch Rickey in 1881; philosopher Susanne K. Langer in 1895; actor Irene Dunne in 1898; nuclear physicist Robert Van de Graaff in 1901; movie director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting) in 1921; actor John Hillerman in 1932; drummer Peter Criss (KISS) in 1945 (age 72); psychic Uri Geller in 1946 (age 71); TV series creator Dick Wolf in 1946 (age 70); musician Alan Parsons in 1948 (age 68); actor Jenny Agutter in 1952 (age 65); American Idol winner David Cook in 1982 (age 35); actor Jonah Hill in 1983 (age 34); singer JoJo in 1990 (age 27); actor Jillian Rose Reed in 1991 (age 26).
On this date in history:
In 1803, the United States formally took over territory acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1812, Sacagawea, the Indian woman who helped guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition, died.
In 1860, South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
In 1956, a Montgomery, Ala., public bus boycott officially ended but not until it had given a major boost to the civil rights struggle in the South. The boycott had been called in reaction to the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest of Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man.
In 1987, a passenger ferry struck by an oil tanker sank in the Philippines and nearly 1,600 people died in what was called the century’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.
In 1989, the United States invaded Panama to oust Manuel Noriega and install the duly elected civilian government.
In 1990, Eduard Shevardnadze abruptly resigned as Soviet foreign minister, warning that a “dictatorship is coming.” The Soviet Union formally broke up a year later and Shevardnadze became leader of his native Georgia.
In 1995, 160 people were killed when an American Airlines 757 crashed into a mountain shortly before it was scheduled to land in Cali, Colombia.
In 1998, a Houston woman, Nkem Chukwu, gave birth to seven babies after delivering the first of her octuplets 12 days earlier. The six girls and two boys were the only known set of octuplets to be born alive in the United States. The smallest baby, a girl, died a week later.
In 2001, Argentine President Fernando de la Rua resigned amid mass protests.
In 2007, two paintings, including one by Pablo Picasso called Portrait of Suzanne Bloch, were stolen from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil. The paintings were recovered in January 2008.
In 2011, the Kepler, NASA’s orbiting space observatory, discovered two Earth-size planets outside the solar system but scientists said both orbit too close to a sun-like star to have water on the surface.
In 2013, Canada’s Supreme Court struck down the country’s anti-prostitution laws, calling them “grossly disproportionate.” The government instituted a new law in 2014 that targets pimps and people who buy sexual services.
In 2014, two New York police officers were killed execution-style while sitting in their patrol vehicle. The shooter had posted threatening messages on social media against police and in support of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both killed by police.
In 2015, a landslide at an industrial park in Shenzhen, China, toppled dozens of buildings and killed 73 people. The disaster was caused by a construction waste.
A thought for the day: “Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” — Albert Einstein
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