43 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated.
1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.
1732 – The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.
1787 – Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
1904 – Comparative fuel trials begin between warships HMS Spiteful and HMS Peterel: Spiteful was the first warship powered solely by fuel oil, and the trials led to the obsolescence of coal in ships of the Royal Navy.
1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In total, 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded. Eighteen ships were sunk or run aground, including five battleships. All of the Americans killed or wounded during the attack were non-combatants, given the fact there was no state of war when the attack occurred.
1963 – Instant replay makes its debut during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
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.
1993 – Long Island Rail Road shooting: Passenger Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR.
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.
2015 – The JAXA probe Akatsuki successfully enters orbit around Venus five years after the first attempt.
Births
903 – Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, Persian astronomer and author (d. 986)
1545 – Henry Stuart, English-Scottish husband of Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1567)
1863 – Richard Warren Sears, businessman, co-founded Sears (d. 1914)
1873 – Willa Cather, novelist, short story writer, and poet (d. 1947)
1892 – Stuart Davis, American painter and academic (d. 1964)
1928 – Noam Chomsky, American linguist and philosopher
Deaths
43 BC – Cicero, Roman philosopher, lawyer, and politician (b. 106 BC)
983 – Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 955)
1817 – William Bligh, English admiral and politician, (b. 1745)
1902 – Thomas Nast, German-American cartoonist (b. 1840)
1941 – Attack on Pearl Harbor:
In total, 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded.
1970 – Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist, sculptor, and author (b. 1883)
1975 – Thornton Wilder, American novelist and playwright (b. 1897)
2006 – Jeane Kirkpatrick, 16th United States Ambassador to the United Nations (b. 1926)
