Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Dec. 22. On this date in 2001, a bit over three months after the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami became alarmed over a fellow passenger trying to light his shoe. With the help of attendants, they overpowered the man who, as it turned out, was trying to use a match to detonate powerful explosives hidden in his sneakers. Advertisement Bernie Goetz became a household word for something he did on this date in 1984. The apparently mild-mannered engineer shot and wounded four black youths he said were about to rob him on a New York City subway. Goetz -- who became known in the media as the "subway vigilante" -- ended up serving eight months in prison for carrying an illegal weapon, but was cleared of assault and attempted murder charges. An estimated 5,000 people were killed on this date in 1972 when a series of earthquakes left the Nicaraguan capital of Managua in ruins. Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, the last hard-line communist holdout against East Bloc reforms, fell from power in the face of continuing massive demonstrations on this date in 1989. On Christmas Day, he and his wife were executed. Advertisement This is the birthday of the U.S. Navy. On this date in 1785, the American Continental Navy fleet was organized -- consisting of two frigates, two brigs and three schooners. Sailors were paid $8 a month. Colo the gorilla was born at Ohio's Columbus Zoo on this date in 1956, tipping the scales at 3 1/4 pounds. It was the first gorilla to be born in captivity. Political dissident and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, were allowed to return to Moscow after seven years of internal exile on this date in 1986. Sakharov was known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb," but ticked off Soviet officials with his calls for human rights reforms in the U.S.S.R. And the daughter of Cuban President Fidel Castro was granted political asylum in the United States on this date in 1993. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
