Today in History.....December 16

On this day in …

* 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes

* 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate

* 1916, Gregory Rasputin, the monk who wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was killed by a group of noblemen

* 1944, the World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium

* 1950, President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency to fight "Communist imperialism."

* 1960, 134 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over New York City

* 1985, reputed organized-crime chief Paul Castellano was shot to death outside a New York City restaurant

* 1995, President Clinton and congressional Republicans traded accusations as their budget impasse led to a second shutdown of the federal government

* 2000, President-elect Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first black secretary of state

* 2004, Saddam Hussein met with a lawyer for the first time since his capture a year earlier. ALSO: Bobby Jo Stinnett, 23, of Skidmore, Mo., was found dying in her home, her unborn baby cut from her womb (Lisa Montgomery of Melvern, Kansas, is to face trial for allegedly strangling Stinnett, performing a crude Caesarean section on her and parading the infant around as her own). Britain's highest court dealt a huge blow to the government's anti-terrorism policy by ruling that it could not detain foreign suspects indefinitely without trial.