POPnews - December 7th

[As these things go, it's a third-rate planet in the boondocks of the
galaxy, but I like it better than any place I've ever lived thus far.]
43 BCE - Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero was assassinated.

1696 - Connecticut Route 108 - one of the oldest extant roads in the US - was completed through Trumbull; it was then known as the Farm Highway, and is now called Nichols Avenue.

1724 - Religious unrest following the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toruń) by Polish authorities resulted in the Tumult of Thorn, an event still observed in remembrance there at St. Mary's Church.

1732 - The Royal Opera House opened at London's Covent Garden.

1776 - France's Marquis de Lafayette attempted to enter the American military as a major general through the American agent in Paris, Silas Deane.

1787 - Delaware became the first state to ratify the US Constitution, making it the first US state.

1889 - Gilbert & Sullivan's comic light opera The Gondoliers premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London.

1916 - David Lloyd George was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain.

1930 - W1XAV in Boston broadcast video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers; the broadcast also included America's first television commercial, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.

1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta killed 119.

1955 - Clement Attlee stepped down as leader of Britain's Labour Party to be created Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II ten days later.

1963 - Instant replay was used for the first time at an Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

1965 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lifted mutual excommunications against their respective positions that had been in place since 1054.

1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, was launched; during the flight the crew took the photograph known as The Blue Marble.

1982 - Charles Brooks, Jr. became the first person executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1987 - Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 crashed near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shot his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shot both pilots and himself.

1993 - Colin Ferguson murdered 6 and injured 19 during the so-called Long Island Railroad Massacre.

1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

2006 - A tornado struck Kensal Green in North West London, seriously damaging around 150 properties - none of which were mobile homes.
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