Today in History.....December 8

On this day in …

* 1863, President Abraham Lincoln announced his plan for the reconstruction of the South.

* 1941, the United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor

* 1949, the Chinese Nationalist government moved from the Chinese mainland to Formosa as the Communists pressed their attacks

* 1980, rock star John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by an apparently deranged fan

* 1987, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev signed a treaty calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. ALSO: the "intefadeh" by "Palestinians" began

* 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into U.S. law the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect at the start of 1994

* 1999, a jury in Memphis, Tenn., hearing a lawsuit filed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family found that the civil rights leader had been the victim of a vast murder conspiracy, not a lone assassin. Also: A Russian diplomat was ordered to leave the U.S.
after he was allegedly caught gathering information from the State Department with an eavesdropping device

* 2004, the Senate completed congressional approval of the biggest overhaul of U.S. intelligence in a half century, voting 89-2 to send the measure to President Bush