Saturday, December 11, 2010

POPnews - December 11th

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[Those responsible for the French Revolution were to blame for some of the most heinous miscarriages of justice in the history of jurisprudence, including the trial of King Louis XVI, shown above; the fact that many of them were lawyers only made things worse. On the plus side, though, they did make the whole genre of lawyer jokes possible.]

1282 - Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales recognized by the British Crown, was killed at Cilmeri by soldiers in the service of England's Edward I; the Welsh remember him as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf.

1789 - The University of North Carolina was chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly.

1792 - The former Louis XVI of France - having been captured following the Insurrection and forced to abdicate in August 1791 - was put on trial; his conviction on the grounds of high treason before the National Convention was a foregone conclusion. Citizen Louis Capet would be executed in January 1793 by Charles Henri Sanson.

1816 - Indiana became the 19th US state.

1905 - An uprising by workers in Ukraine occurred, temporarily establishing the Shuliavka Republic in the capital, Kiev.

1907 - The New Zealand Parliament Buildings were almost completely destroyed by fire.

1925 - Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quas Primas introduced the Feast of Christ the King.

1931 - The Statute of Westminster - an important step towards sovereignty for dominions within the British Empire such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa - was enacted by the British Parliament.

1941 - Germany and Italy declared war against the United States in retaliation for the United States' declaration of war against the Empire of Japan on December 8th, which was itself in reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th.

1946 - The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established.

1958 - French Upper Volta gained self-governing status from France, becoming the Republic of Upper Volta with full membership in the French Community.

1964 - Che Guevara addressed the United Nations as head of the Cuban delegation; during his speech there an unknown assailant fired a mortar shell at the UN Building.

1971 - The Libertarian Party was formed in the United States.

1972 - The Apollo 17 mission landed on the Moon.

1981 - At the El Mozote massacre armed forces in El Salvador killed an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran Civil War.

1993 - Forty-eight people were killed when a block of the Highland Towers collapsed near the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

1994 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops into Chechnya at the outset of the First Chechen War.

1997 - The Kyoto Protocol was opened for signature; to date 183 parties have signed it.

2005 - The Buncefield Oil Depot caught fire in the English town of Hemel Hempstead.
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