December 14
MyWikiBiz, Author Your Legacy — Thursday October 31, 2024
December 14 in history
- 1799, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Virginia., home at age 67
- 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, beating out an expedition led by Robert F. Scott
- 1939, the Soviet Union was dropped from the League of Nations
- 1945, Josef Kramer, ym"sh, known as "the beast of Belsen," and 10 others were hanged in Hameln for crimes committed at the Belsen and Auschwitz Nazi concentration camps
- 1946, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish U.N. headquarters in New York
- 1962, the U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached Venus, transmitting information about the planet
- 1967, first time DNA created in a test tube
- 1975, six South Moluccan extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen
- 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which it won in a defensive war against Syria in 1967
- 1986, the experimental aircraft Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California on the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world
- 1988, America agreed to talk to PLO (the first time in 13 years)
- 1990, Right to Die case permits Nancy Cruzan to have her feeding tube removed; she dies 12 days later
- 1995, Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia signed the Bosnian peace treaty in Paris. ALSO: AIDS patient Jeff Getty received the first-ever bone-marrow transplant from a baboon (however, the experimental procedure at a San Francisco hospital was criticized by animal rights activists. The transplant failed, but Getty survived)
- 2000, President-elect George W. Bush conferred by phone with congressional leaders of both parties and planned a goodwill tour of Washington, D.C.; he also received a flood of congratulatory calls from world leaders on his first full day as president-elect. ALSO: U.S. businessman Edward Pope was pardoned and released by Russia after being convicted of espionage. The Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner.
- 2006, a British police inquiry concluded that the deaths of Princess Diana and her boyfriend in a 1997 Paris car crash were a "tragic accident" and that allegations of murder were unfounded