December 7 - Shhh

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This Day In History

1732

The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.

1787

Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1869

American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri.

1930

W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.
1941
The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing the United States to declare war upon Japan.

1963

Instant replay makes its debut during an Army–Navy game.

1965

Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously revoke mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.

1972

Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as the Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

1995

The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

Famous Birthdays

521

Saint Columba, Irish Christian missionary to Scotland (d. 597)

903

Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi, Persian astronomer (d. 986)

1598

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Italian artist (d. 1680)

1784

Allan Cunningham, British poet (d. 1842)

1863

Richard Sears, American department store founder (d. 1914)

1873

Willa Cather, American novelist (d. 1947)

1892

Stuart Davis, early American modernist painter (d. 1964)

1905

Gerard Kuiper, Dutch-born American astronomer (d. 1973)

1915

Leigh Brackett, American screenwriter (d. 1978)

1942

Harry Chapin, American singer and songwriter (d. 1981)

1948

Gary Morris, American singer

1949

Tom Waits, American singer, composer, and actor
1956
Larry Bird, American basketball player
1979
Jennifer Carpenter, American actress