Today in History.....December

On this day in …

* 1793, Thomas Paine is arrested in France for treason

* 1832, John C. Calhoun became the first vice president of the
United States to resign, stepping down over differences with
President Jackson

* 1895, the world's first commercial screening of a film takes place
at the Grand Cafe in Paris

* 1917, the New York Evening Mail published a facetious -- as well
as fictitious -- essay by H.L. Mencken on the history of bathtubs in
America

* 1945, Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance

* 1972, Hanoi announces return to the Paris peace talks

* 1973, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published "Gulag Archipelago," an
expose of the Soviet prison system

* 1995, President Clinton vetoed a $265 billion-dollar defense bill,
saying it would waste money on an unneeded missile defense system.
(Congress failed to override the veto.)

* 2000, the Census Bureau released its first numbers from the 2000
national count; they showed that America's population had risen to
281,421,906 --- up 13-point-two percent from 1990

* 2004, the US Agency for International Development said it was
adding $20 million to an initial $15 million contribution for Asian
tsunami relief as Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled at a
United Nations official's suggestion the United States was being
"stingy".