Today is Wednesday, Dec.21, the 341st day of 2022. There are 11 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Dec. 21,1777 During the American Revolution, General George Washington led 11,000 regulars to take up winter quarters at Valley Forge on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, 22 miles (35 km) northwest of Philadelphia.
On this date:
1843 English author Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, which became one of the outstanding Christmas stories of modern literature.
1860 Following Abraham Lincoln's election as U.S. president, South Carolina became the first U.S. state to secede from the Union.
1915 French singer and actress Edith Piaf, whose interpretation of the chanson (French ballad) made her internationally famous, was born.
1946 Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, a drama starring Jimmy Stewart, premiered and later became a holiday classic.
1946 The Viet Minh, founded by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, began the First Indochina War against France.
1960 The Vietnamese National Liberation Front was formed, with the purpose of effecting the reunification of North and South Vietnam.
1971 The sci-fi drama A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of a novel by Anthony Burgess, had its world premiere; although widely acclaimed, the movie's violent and sexually explicit scenes proved controversial, and it received an X rating when released in the United States.
1974 Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States, succeeding Gerald Ford, who had been elevated to the presidency following the resignation of Richard Nixon.
1974 Ethiopia was declared a socialist state under the leadership of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
1988 Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, because of a terrorist bombing; in 2003 the government of Libya accepted responsibility for the explosion and in 2004 agreed to compensate the families of the victims.
1989 The United States launched Operation Just Cause, a military invasion of Panama, the initial attack focusing on the headquarters of leader Manuel Noriega.
1996 The horror classic Scream, directed by Wes Craven, was released in American theatres; it became known for using the genre's clichés for comic effect.
1997 James Cameron's Titanic, a drama about the doomed ocean liner starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, premiered; it later became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
2008 American director Robert Mulligan, of the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), died at age 83.
2012 Park Geun-Hye became the first female elected president of South Korea; she was sworn into office the following year; however, she also became the country's first democratically elected president to be removed from office when she was impeached in 2017.
2019 U.S. President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which established the Space Force, a new branch of the U.S. military.