2006 – Felipe Calderón, the President of Mexico, launches a military-led offensive to put down the drug cartel violence in the state of Michoacán. This effort is often regarded as the first event in the Mexican Drug War.
2006 – The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust is opened in Tehran, Iran, by then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; nations such as Israel and the United States express concern.
1994 – First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders Russian troops into Chechnya.
1978 – The Lufthansa heist is committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time.
1948 – Arab–Israeli War: The United Nations passes General Assembly Resolution 194, creating a Conciliation Commission to mediate the conflict.
1946 – The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.
1941 – World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.
1941 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy suffers its first loss of surface vessels during the Battle of Wake Island.
1816 – Indiana becomes the 19th U.S. state.
1815 – The U.S. Senate creates a select committee on finance and a uniform national currency, predecessor of the United States Senate Committee on Finance.
Births
1996 – Hailee Steinfeld, American actress. Thereafter, Steinfeld gained further prominence for roles in Ender's Game (2013), Romeo & Juliet (2013), Begin Again (2013), and 3 Days to Kill (2014).
1992 – Tiffany Alvord, American singer-songwriter. She has a large social presence on YouTube with over 600 million video views and over 3 million subscribers.
1990 – Derrick Nix, American basketball player. He played college basketball for Michigan State.
1987 – Clifton Geathers, American football player. He played college football at the University of South Carolina.
1986 – Roy Hibbert, American basketball player. He is a two-time NBA All-Star, and earned NBA All-Defensive Second Team honors in 2014.
1981 – Jeff McComsey, American author and illustrator. Jeff McComsey (born December 11, 1981), is an American illustrator and author of graphic novels, animations, and video game art.
1979 – Rider Strong, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. He is also known for his role in the 2002 horror film Cabin Fever and as the voice of Tom Lucitor in Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
1978 – Roy Wood, Jr., American comedian, actor, and radio host. Roy Wood (born 8 November 1946) is an English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
1976 – Shareef Abdur-Rahim, American basketball player, coach, and manager. He last played in the NBA for the Kings.
1974 – Rey Mysterio, American wrestler. Óscar Gutiérrez (born December 11, 1974), better known by his ring name Rey Mysterio, is an American professional wrestler currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand.
1973 – Mos Def, American rapper. Yasiin Bey (/jæˈsiːn ˈbeɪ/; born Dante Terrell Smith; December 11, 1973), better known by his stage name Mos Def (/ˌmoʊs ˈdɛf/), is an American rapper, singer, actor and activist.
1971 – Willie McGinest, American football player and sportscaster. William Lee McGinest, Jr. (born December 11, 1971) is a former American football linebacker who played fifteen seasons in the National Football League (NFL).
1970 – Victoria Fuller, American model and actress. Victoria Alynette Fuller (born December 11, 1970 in Santa Barbara, California, United States) is an American glamour model, artist, actress and reality TV contestant.
1969 – Max Martini, American actor, director, and screenwriter. Maximilian Carlo Martini (born December 11, 1969) is an American film, theater and television actor, writer, and director known for his roles as Corporal Fred Henderson in Saving Private Ryan, Wiley in Level 9, First Sergeant Sid Wojo in The Great Raid, and as Master Sergeant Mack Gerhardt on the military television drama, The Unit.
1967 – Mo'Nique, American comedian, actress, and producer. Monique Angela Hicks (née Imes; born December 11, 1967), known professionally as Mo'Nique, is an American comedian and actress.
1966 – Gary Dourdan, American actor. He is known for portraying Warrick Brown on the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and for portraying Shazza Zulu on the television series A Different World.
1965 – Jay Bell, American baseball player and coach. Jay Stuart Bell (born December 11, 1965) is an American former Major League Baseball shortstop who is currently the manager of the Rocket City Trash Pandas of the Double-A Southern League.
1964 – Dave Schools, American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer. David Allen Schools (born December 11, 1964) is a bass player and founding member of American rock band Widespread Panic.
1958 – Nikki Sixx, American bass player, songwriter, and producer. Nikki Sixx (born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr.; December 11, 1958) is an American musician, songwriter, radio host, and photographer, best known as the co-founder, bassist, and primary songwriter of the band Mötley Crüe.
1958 – Tom Shadyac, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. In 2010, Shadyac departed from comedic work to write, direct, and narrate his documentary film I Am, in which he explores his abandonment of a materialistic lifestyle following a bicycle accident three years earlier.
1957 – Peter Bagge, American author and illustrator. Peter Bagge (pronounced /bæɡ/, as in bag; born December 11, 1957) is an American cartoonist whose best-known work includes the comics Hate and Neat Stuff.
1956 – Lani Brockman, American actress and director, founded Studio East. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Studio East.
1955 – Gene Grossman, American economist and academic. Gene Michael Grossman (born December 11, 1955, in New York) is the Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics at Princeton University.
1955 – Stu Jackson, American basketball player, coach, and manager. Jackson has coached the New York Knicks from 1989 to 1990, and the Vancouver Grizzlies in 1997, and has also served as the Grizzlies' general manager.
1954 – Brad Bryant, American golfer. Bradley Dub Bryant (born December 11, 1954) is an American professional golfer.
1954 – Jermaine Jackson, American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer. He was a member of The Jackson Five, a singing group consisting of him and four of his brothers from 1965 to 1975, where he was the second lead vocalist after his brother Michael and played bass guitar.
1953 – Bess Armstrong, American actress. Armstrong also starred in the ABC drama series My So-Called Life and had lead roles in a number of made-for-television films.
1949 – Christina Onassis, American-born Greek/Argentine businesswoman, socialite, and heiress (d. 1988), was an American-born Greek businesswoman, socialite, and heiress to the Onassis fortune. She was the only daughter of Aristotle Onassis and Tina Onassis Niarchos.
1947 – Teri Garr, American actress and dancer. Her accolades include one Academy Award nomination, a BAFTA Award nomination, and one National Board of Review Award.
1944 – Brenda Lee, American singer-songwriter. Brenda Lee (born Brenda Mae Tarpley; December 11, 1944) is an American performer and the top-charting solo female vocalist of the 1960s.
1944 – Jon Garrison, American tenor and educator. Jon Garrison (né Jon Long; born December 11, 1944 in Higginsville, Missouri) is a successful American operatic tenor who has been performing in locations around the world since 1965.
1944 – Lynda Day George, American actress. Lynda Louise Day George (born December 11, 1944) is an American television and film actress whose career spanned three decades from the 1960s to the 1980s.
1943 – John Kerry, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 68th United States Secretary of State. He was the Democratic nominee in the 2004 presidential election, losing to Republican incumbent President George W.
1941 – J. Frank Wilson, American singer-songwriter (d. 1991), was an American singer, the lead vocalist of J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers and born in Lufkin, Texas.
1941 – Max Baucus, American lawyer, politician, and diplomat, 11th United States Ambassador to China. Senator for nearly 36 years, making him the longest-serving Senator in Montana history.
1940 – David Gates, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer. David Ashworth Gates (born December 11, 1940) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and producer, frontman and co-lead singer (with Jimmy Griffin) of the group Bread, which reached the tops of the musical charts in Europe and North America on several occasions in the 1970s.
1940 – Donna Mills, American actress and producer. She made her film debut the following year in The Incident.
1939 – Thomas McGuane, American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Thomas Francis McGuane III (born December 11, 1939) is an American writer.
1939 – Tom Hayden, American activist and politician (d. 2016), was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his major role as an anti-war, civil rights, and radical intellectual activist in the 1960s, authoring the Port Huron Statement and standing trial in the Chicago Seven case.
1938 – McCoy Tyner, American jazz musician. Alfred McCoy Tyner (born December 11, 1938) is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.
1937 – Jim Harrison, American novelist, essayist, and poet, was an American poet, novelist, and essayist. He was a prolific and versatile writer publishing over three dozen books in several genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature.
1932 – Keith Waldrop, American author and poet. Keith Waldrop (born December 11, 1932, in Emporia, Kansas) is an American poet and academic.
1931 – Rita Moreno, Puerto Rican-American actress, singer, and dancer. Her career has spanned over 70 years; among her notable acting work are supporting roles in the musical films The King and I and West Side Story, as well as a 1971–1977 stint on the children's television series The Electric Company, and a supporting role on the 1997–2003 TV drama Oz.
1931 – Ronald Dworkin, American philosopher and scholar (d. 2013), was an American philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law. At the time of his death, he was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London.
1927 – John Buscema, American illustrator (d. 2002), was an American comic book artist and one of the mainstays of Marvel Comics during its 1960s and 1970s ascendancy into an industry leader and its subsequent expansion to a major pop-culture conglomerate. His younger brother Sal Buscema is also a comic book artist.
1926 – Big Mama Thornton, American singer-songwriter (d. 1984), was an American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies.
1925 – Aaron Feuerstein, American businessman and philanthropist, was the third-generation owner and CEO of Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
1925 – Paul Greengard, American neuroscientist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate, was an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the molecular and cellular function of neurons. In 2000, Greengard, Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system.
1924 – Doc Blanchard, American football player and colonel (d. 2009), was the first ever football player to win the James E. Sullivan Award, all in 1945.
1923 – Betsy Blair, American actress and dancer (d. 2009), was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London.
1923 – Lillian Cahn, Hungarian-born American businesswoman, co-founded Coach, Inc. (d. 2013), was a Hungarian-born American businessperson who co-founded Coach, Inc. with her husband, Miles Cahn. Lillian Cahn also created Coach's first line of handbags, which remains the label's trademark consumer product.
1922 – Grace Paley, American short story writer and poet (d. 2007), was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist.
1922 – Maila Nurmi, Finnish-American actress, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2008), was a Finnish-American actress and television personality who created the campy 1950s character Vampira.
1919 – Marie Windsor, American actress (d. 2000), was an actress known for her femme fatale characters in the classic film noir features Force of Evil and The Narrow Margin. Windsor's height created problems for her in scenes with all but the tallest actors.
1918 – Clinton Adams, American painter and historian (d. 2002), was an American artist and art historian.
1911 – Val Guest, English-American director, producer, screenwriter, and composer (d. 2006), was an English film director and screenwriter. Beginning as a writer (and later director) of comedy films, he is best known for his work for Hammer, for whom he directed 14 films, and science fiction films.
1908 – Elliott Carter, American composer and academic (d. 2012), was an American modernist composer. He is one of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, having combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra-modernism" into a distinctive style with a personal harmonic and rhythmic language, after an early neoclassical phase.
1905 – Gilbert Roland, Mexican-American actor and singer (d. 1994), was a Mexican-born American film and television actor whose career spanned seven decades from the 1920s until the 1980s. He was twice nominated for the Golden Globe Award in 1952 and 1964, and inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
1904 – Marge, American cartoonist (d. 1993). Marge is a female name, a shortened form of Marjorie or Margaret. Notable persons with the name Marge include:
1890 – Mark Tobey, American-Swiss painter and educator (d. 1976), was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophically from most Abstract Expressionist painters.
1889 – Walter Knott, American farmer and businessman, founded Knott's Berry Farm (d. 1981), was an American farmer who created the Knott's Berry Farm amusement park in California, introduced the Boysenberry, and made Knott's Berry Farm boysenberry preserves.
1882 – Fiorello H. La Guardia, American lawyer and politician, 99th Mayor of New York City (d. 1947), was an American politician. He is best known for being the 99th Mayor of New York City for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a pro-New Deal liberal progressive Republican.
1882 – Max Born, German physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970), was a German-Jewish physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s.
1863 – Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer and academic (d. 1941), was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C.
1725 – George Mason, American lawyer and politician (d. 1792). Constitutional Convention of 1787, one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution.
Deaths
2015 – John "Hot Rod" Williams, American basketball player (b. 1962)
2013 – Barbara Branden, Canadian-American author and academic (b. 1929)
2011 – John Patrick Foley, American cardinal (b. 1935)
2010 – Dick Hoerner, American football player (b. 1922)
2008 – Bettie Page, American model (b. 1923)
2000 – David Lewis, American actor (b. 1916)
1998 – Lynn Strait, American singer-songwriter (b. 1968)
1996 – Willie Rushton, English cartoonist, author, and publisher, co-founded Private Eye (b. 1937)
1995 – Greg Bahnsen, American minister and philosopher (b. 1948)
1991 – Robert Q. Lewis, American actor, comedian, game show host/panelist, and television personality (b. 1921)
1989 – Louise Dahl-Wolfe, American photographer (b. 1895)
1984 – George Waggner, American director, producer and actor (b. 1894)
1984 – Oskar Seidlin, German-American author, poet, and scholar (b. 1911)
1979 – James J. Gibson, American psychologist and author (b. 1904)
1978 – Paul O'Dea, American baseball player and manager (b. 1920)
1978 – Vincent du Vigneaud, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
1975 – Lee Wiley, American singer (b. 1908)
1971 – Maurice McDonald, American businessman, co-founded McDonald's (b. 1902)
1968 – Arthur Hays Sulzberger, American publisher (b. 1891)
1966 – Augusta Fox Bronner, American psychologist, specialist in juvenile psychology (b. 1881)
1964 – Percy Kilbride, American actor (b. 1888)
1964 – Sam Cooke, American singer-songwriter (b. 1931)
1959 – Jim Bottomley, American baseball player and manager (b. 1900)
1941 – John Gillespie Magee, Jr., American pilot and poet (b. 1922)
1936 – Myron Grimshaw, American baseball player (b. 1875)
1909 – Ludwig Mond, German-born chemist and British industrialist who discovered the metal carbonyls (b. 1839)
1906 – Charles Townsend, American fencer, engineer, and academic (b. 1872)
1880 – Oliver Winchester, American businessman, founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company (b. 1810)
Remind me of this day
