Today in History....December 14

I must start off the day with this........my Mom turns 80 today!

Yours truly, the Mrs., the 3 little Joe's, younger 'bro Gringo Grande, wife Gloria, Alexis, Christopher, oldest 'bro Ron, wife Cindy, Carrie, Erica, oldest sister Jane, husband Jerry, Tony Kate, older 'bro Cameron, Justin & Kelly, older sister Karen, Uncle Carl - Aunt Minnie, Uncle Howard, Aunt Eileen, Uncle Leonard, friends Vinberg & Judy, Billy & Kathy, Bobby-DebbieUncle Bob-Aunt Judy, Uncle Dave-Aunt Barb, cousins all over the board.....
Happy Birthday....we all love you!

* 1799, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67

* 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, beating out an expedition led by Robert F. Scott

* 1939, the Soviet Union was dropped from the League of Nations

* 1945, Josef Kramer, ym"sh, known as "the beast of Belsen," and 10 others were hanged in Hameln for crimes committed at the Belsen and Auschwitz Nazi concentration camps

* 1946, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish U.N.
headquarters in New York

* 1962, the U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached Venus, transmitting information about the planet

* 1967, first time DNA created in a test tube

* 1975, six South Moluccan extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen

* 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which it won in a defensive war against Syria in 1967

* 1986, the experimental aircraft Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California on the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world

* 1988, America agreed to talk to PLO (the first time in 13 years)

* 1990, Right to Die case permits Nancy Cruzan to have her feeding tube removed; she dies 12 days later

* 1995, Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia signed the Bosnian peace treaty in Paris. ALSO: AIDS patient Jeff Getty received the first-ever bone-marrow transplant from a baboon (however, the experimental procedure at a San Francisco hospital was criticized by animal rights activists. The transplant failed, but Getty survived)

* 2000, President-elect George W. Bush conferred by phone with congressional leaders of both parties and planned a goodwill tour of Washington, D.C.; he also received a flood of congratulatory calls from world leaders on his first full day as president-elect. ALSO: U.S.
businessman Edward Pope was pardoned and released by Russia after being convicted of espionage. The Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner.

* 2006, a British police inquiry concluded that the deaths of Princess Diana and her boyfriend in a 1997 Paris car crash were a "tragic accident" and that allegations of murder were unfounded