Happy Birthday, Lacey!!

[msmoon]

On This Day:
Wednesday December 13, 2006

This is the 347th day of the year, with 18 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: St. Augustine

St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest permanent city in the United States; the Spanish established the first European settlement there in 1565. St. Augustine was founded 42 years before Jamestown, Virginia, and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

Holidays

• Feast day of St. Lucy, St. Aubert of Cambrai, St. Othilia or Odilia, St. Eustratius of Sebastea, and St. Judocus or Josse.
• Malta: Republic Day (1974).
• Sweden, St. Lucia: St. Lucia Day/Luciadagen.

Events

• 1474 - Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, were proclaimed Queen and King of Castile.
• 1577 - Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey around the world.
• 1621 - The first American furs to be exported from the continent left for England aboard the Fortune, under the care of Robert Cushman.
• 1642 - Dutch navigator Abel Tasman arrived in present-day New Zealand.
• 1769 - Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, received its charter.
• 1862 - Confederate General Robert E. Lee's vastly outnumbered army defeated Union General Ambrose Burnside and his troops in the Battle of Fredericksburg.
• 1903 - Molds for ice cream cones were patented by Italo Marcione of New York.
• 1928 - George Gershwin's musical work "An American in Paris" premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York.
• 1937 - The Japanese army occupied Nanking, China -- the beginning of the "Rape of Nanking."
• 1973 - Great Britain cut the work week to three days to save energy.
• 1978 - The Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
• 1981 - Poland's Communist government declared martial law, arrested Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders, and declared the Solidarity trade union illegal. (Martial law formally ended in 1983. )
• 1989 - South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National
• Congress leader Nelson Mandela, in Cape Town.
• 1991 - North Korea and South Korea signed a treaty of reconciliation and nonaggression, formally ending the Korean War 38 years after fighting ceased in 1953.
• 1998 - Voters in Puerto Rico rejected U.S. statehood in a non-binding referendum.
• 2000 - Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency 36 days after Election Day; Democrat Al Gore conceded defeat.
• 2001 - President George W. Bush formally announced the United States withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
• 2001 - The Pentagon released a videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaeda leader said the September 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations.
• 2003 - A tip led U.S. soldiers to a farm outside Tikrit, Iraq, where they found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole and arrest him; the capture is announced to the world the following day.
• 2004 - A jury in Redwood City, Calif., recommended the death penalty for Scott Peterson for the murders of his wife and unborn child.

Births

• 1797 - Heinrich Heine, German poet, satirist, and journalist.
• 1818 - Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady, wife of 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
• 1838 - Alexis Millardet, French botanist who developed the first successful fungicide.
• 1903 - Carlos Montoya, the Spanish-born flamenco guitarist,
• 1925 - Dick Van Dyke, American Emmy Award-winning actor/comedian.
• 1948 - Ted Nugent, hard rock guitarist from Detroit, Michigan.
• 1967 - Jamie Foxx, American comedian and actor.
• 1982 - Lacey my giggle gal from ISR!!! WHOO! The Fairies let us keep her!!

Deaths

• 1466 - Donatello, Italian Renaissance sculptor.
• 1784 - Dr. Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer.
• 1961 - Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses), American folk painter, at age 101.