December 9 - Events

Events

• 730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil: theKhazars annihilate an Umayyadarmy and kill its commander, al-Djarrah ibn Abdullah
• 1425 – The Catholic University of Leuven is founded.
• 1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac,Mexico City.
• 1793 – New York City's first dailynewspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
• 1824 – Patriot forces led by GeneralAntonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to thePeruvian War of Independence.
• 1835 – The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas.
• 1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal, Quebec.
• 1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying Britishforces.
• 1861 – American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress.
• 1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first servingAfrican-American governor of a U.S. state.
• 1875 – The Massachusetts Rifle Association, "America's Oldest Active Gun Club", is founded.
• 1888 – Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department.
• 1897 – Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist dailynewspaper, La Fronde, in Paris.
• 1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
• 1917 – In Palestine, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby capturesJerusalem.
• 1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is announced the first president ofPoland.
• 1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves the constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
• 1935 – Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in gangland murder.
• 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing – Japanesetroops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing.
• 1940 – World War II: Operation Compass – British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attackItalian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.
• 1941 – World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, thethe Republic of Korea, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.
• 1941 – World War II: The 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.
• 1946 – The "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" begin with the "Doctors' Trial", prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
• 1950 – Harry Gold is sentenced to thirty years in jail for helpingKlaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to theSoviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
• 1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communistemployees will be discharged from the company.
• 1956 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810, a Canadair North Star, crashes near Hope, British Columbia, Canada, killing all 62 people on board.
• 1958 – The John Birch Society was founded in the United States.
• 1960 – The first episode of the world's longest running televisionsoap opera Coronation Street is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
• 1961 – The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel ends with verdicts of guilty on 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization.
• 1961 – Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
• 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.
• 1966 – Barbados joins the United Nations.
• 1968 – NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mousewere developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.
• 1971 – The United Arab Emirates join the United Nations.
• 1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
• 1987 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in theGaza Strip and West Bank.
• 1988 – The Michael Hughes Bridge in Sligo, Ireland is officially opened.
• 2000 – The Supreme Court of the United States stays the sixthFlorida recount.
• 2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
• 2006 – Moscow suffers its worst fire since 1977, killing 45 women in a drug rehabilitation center.
• 2008 – The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for a number of alleged crimes including attempting to sell the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama's election to the Presidency.