Today in History....December 22

On this day in …

1807, Congress passed the Embargo Act, barring all U.S. trade with foreign countries

1808, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor and Symphony No. 6 in F Major had their world premieres in Vienna, Austria
1864, during the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah."

1894, French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a court-martial that triggered worldwide charges of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus was eventually vindicated

1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for a wartime conference with President Franklin Roosevelt

1974, Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States

1984, New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shot and wounded four youths on a Manhattan subway, claiming they were about to rob him

1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, the last of Eastern Europe's hard-line Communist rulers, was toppled from power in a popular uprising

1991, the body of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, an American hostage murdered by his captors, practitioners of that "religion of peace", was found dumped along a highway in Lebanon

2001, Richard C. Reid, a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami and convert to that "religion of peace", tried to ignite explosives in his shoes, but was subdued by flight attendants and fellow passengers. (Reid, who later pleaded guilty, is serving a life sentence in federal prison.)

2005,


Congress completed work on a one-month extension of the Patriot Act and sent it to President Bush

Astronomers announced the discovery of two more rings encircling the planet Uranus, the first additions to the planet's ring system in nearly two decades