On this day

1259 – Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels.

1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek (the mission would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois).

1745 – Charles Edward Stewart's army reaches Derby, its furthest point during the second Jacobite Rising.

1791 – The first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, is published.

1872 – The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia (the ship had been abandoned for nine days but was only slightly damaged).

1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published.

1937 – The first issue of the children's comic, The Dandy, is published, one of the first to use speech balloons.

1945 – By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations (the UN is established on October 24, 1945).

1954 – The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida, United States

1956 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studios for the first and last time in history.

1971 – The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be noted in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water".

1980 – English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbands, following the death of drummer John Bonham on September 25th.

1982 – The People's Republic of China adopts its current constitution.

1991 – Pan Am goes bankrupt and ceases operations.

1991 – Journalist Terry A. Anderson is released after 7 years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut. He is the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.

2005 – Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong protest for democracy and call on the Government to allow universal and equal suffrage.

2006 – An adult giant squid is caught on video for the first time by Tsunemi Kubodera near the Ogasawara Islands, 1,000 km (620 mi) south of Tokyo.

1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

1766 – In London, James Christie holds his first sale.

1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message before the U.S. Congress, US President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.

1933 – Prohibition in the United States ends: Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States).

1941 – World War II: In the Battle of Moscow Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.

1945 – Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

1952 – Great Smog of 1952: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.

1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

1969 – The last of the ARPANET Nodes closed.

1983 – ICIMOD is established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal, and legitimised through an Act of Parliament in Nepal in the same year.

2005 – The Lake Tanganyika earthquake causes significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2005 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there.

2006 – Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrows the government in Fiji.

1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.

1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.

1877 – Thomas Edison, using his new phonograph, makes one of the earliest recordings of a human voice, reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

1884 – The Washington Monument in Washington D.C. is completed.

1917 – Finland declares independence from Russia.

1917 – Halifax Explosion: In Canada, a munitions explosion kills more than 1,900 people and destroys part of the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1917 – World War I: USS Jacob Jones is the first American destroyer to be sunk by enemy action when it is torpedoed by German submarine SM U-53.

1921 – The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed in London by British and Irish representatives.

1922 – One year to the day after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State comes into existence.

1928 – The government of Colombia sends military forces to suppress a month-long strike by United Fruit Company workers, resulting in an unknown number of deaths (Banana massacre).

1953 – Vladimir Nabokov completes his controversial novel Lolita.

1957 – Project Vanguard: A launchpad explosion of Vanguard TV3 thwarts the first United States attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit.

1967 – Adrian Kantrowitz performed the first human heart transplant in the United States.

1978 – Spain approves its latest constitution in a referendum.

1989 – The École Polytechnique Massacre (or Montreal Massacre): Marc Lépine, an anti-feminist gunman, murders 14 young women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.

2001 – The Canadian province of Newfoundland is renamed Newfoundland and Labrador.

2006 – NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars.

2008 – The 2008 Greek riots break out upon the killing of a 15-year-old boy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, by a police officer.

1732 – The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.

1869 – American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri.

1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing a declaration of war upon Japan by the United States. Japan also invades Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies at the same time (December 8 in Asia).

1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1988 – Spitak Earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills nearly 25,000, injures 15,000 and leaves 400,000 homeless.

1993 – The Long Island Rail Road massacre: Passenger Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR in Nassau County, New York.

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

1999 – The Recording Industry Association of America files a lawsuit against the Napster file-sharing client alleging copyright infringement.

2006 – A tornado strikes Kensal Green, North West London, seriously damaging about 150 properties.

7th December 1979
London Calling (single) released by the Clash.

I was nearly 8 years old but i clearly remember what i was doing on 8th december 1980......... it was the day that John Lennon was shot
(i was eating my breakfast before leaving for school when the news came on the radio)

1854 – In his Apostolic constitution (Ineffabilis Deus), Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin.

1912 – Leaders of the German Empire hold an Imperial War Council to discuss the possibility that war might break out.

1953 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, and the U.S. launches its "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment and information to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world.

1966 – The Greek ship SS Heraklion sinks in a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200.

1974 – A plebiscite results in the abolition of monarchy in Greece.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman, a mentally unstable fan, in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City.

1987 – The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed.

2009 – Bombings in Baghdad, Iraq kill 127 and injure 448.

2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the first launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

2010 – The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus at a distance of about 80,800 km.

1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.

1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.

1940 – World War II: Operation Compass – British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.

1950 – Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1960 – The first episode of the world's longest-running television soap opera Coronation Street is broadcast in the United Kingdom.

1962 – The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona.

1965 – The Kecksburg UFO incident: a fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined the object.

1968 – NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.

1971 – The United Arab Emirates join the United Nations.

2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.

2009 – The Norwegian spiral anomaly appears in the sky over Norway.

1981: Mystery disease kills homosexuals
A mysterious epidemic, which has been discovered in homosexual men, is causing increasing concern in the United States.
The unknown condition, which consists of two separate diseases - a form of pneumonia and skin cancer, has been found in 180 patients in 15 states since last July.

It has claimed around 75 lives so far in the US and up to 92% of the victims are homosexual men.

One death has been reported from the virus in London.

Although doctors have identified what appears to be a new disease, they have yet to devise a cure.

The epidemic is being investigated by the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta.

The specialist unit has already discovered the causes of two other diseases, the toxic shock syndrome and Legionnaires' disease.

Dr James Curran, who is investigating the condition, said: "It is a very serious problem and it does not seem to be on the wane."

Three studies in the New England Journal of Medicine show that the immune systems of victims are severely weakened, leaving them vulnerable to serious infections from germs which most people normally shrug off.

Homosexuals who have developed either of the two conditions have shown a low resistance to standard tests on their immune system.

Four victims also had rare skin ulcers normally caused by the herpes simplex virus.

Researchers claim that their findings are "part of a nationwide epidemic of immunodeficiency among male homosexuals".

Doctors are unsure of the cause of the epidemic which is carried in semen and other body secretions.

A study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) suggests that homosexuals may be repeatedly infected with the virus.

One case also involved an intravenous drug user which implies that the disease could be spread by sharing needles.


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The mysterious epidemic has claimed 75 lives in the US so far



In Context
The unknown condition was eventually named as Aids (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) virus.
The disease caused widespread panic in the United States where 4,000 people were infected in the space of two years.

During that time it also became apparent that the epidemic was not restricted to homosexuals.

Cases of Aids were also discovered among heterosexuals, drug users and blood transfusion patients.

The virus which was isolated as the cause of the disease was called Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and it was first discovered in 1983.

Around 24 million people have died from Aids since it first emerged and it is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is still no cure for the disease despite numerous trials in North America, Europe and Thailand.


Stories From 10 Dec
1988: Death toll rises in Armenian earthquake
1990: Iraq frees British hostages
2003: Mother cleared of murdering babies
1981: Mystery disease kills homosexuals
1961: Apartheid attacked at Nobel ceremony
1979: Daredevil Kidd's 80ft river jump


http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...524039.stm

1884 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.

1898 – Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the conflict.

1901 – The first Nobel Prizes are awarded.

1932 – Thailand adopts a Constitution and becomes a constitutional monarchy.

1948 – The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo.

1989 – Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announces the establishment of Mongolia's democratic movement that changes the second oldest communist country into a democracy.

1993 – The last shift leaves Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland. The closure of the 156-year-old pit marks the end of the old County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages.