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Today is Thursday, Dec. 12, the 347th day of 2024 with 19 to follow. The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Uranus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
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Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include writer Gustave Flaubert in 1821; artist Edvard Munch in 1863; actor Edward G. Robinson in 1893; writer Patrick O'Brian in 1914; musician/actor Frank Sinatra in 1915; TV personality Bob Barker in 1923; former New York Mayor Edward Koch in 1924; Basketball Hall of Fame member Bob Pettit in 1932 (age 92); musician Connie Francis in 1937 (age 87); musician Dionne Warwick in 1940 (age 84); musician Dickey Betts (Allman Brothers) in 1943; Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in 1948 (age 76); actor Bill Nighy in 1949 (age 75); actor Duane Chase in 1950 (age 74); Olympic gymnast/actor Cathy Rigby in 1952 (age 72); musician Sheila E., born Sheila Escovedo, in 1957 (age 67); International Tennis Hall of Fame member Tracy Austin in 1962 (age 62); musician Eric Schenkman (Spin Doctors) in 1963 (age 61); actor Jennifer Connelly in 1970 (age 54); actor Regina Hall in 1970 (age 54); actor Mädchen Amick in 1970 (age 54); actor Mayim Bialik in 1975 (age 49); actor Lucas Hedges in 1996 (age 28); actor Lincoln Melcher in 2003 (age 21).
In this date in history:
In 1870, Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina was sworn in as the first Black American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1901, Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1913, two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was recovered in a Florence, Italy, hotel room.
In 1917, the Rev. Edward J. Flanagan, a 31-year-old Irish priest, opened the doors to Boys Town, a home for troubled and neglected children in Omaha. He lived by the adage, "There is no such thing as a bad boy." It graduated its first class of girls in 1983.
In 1937, Japanese warplanes sank the USS Panay, a U.S. gunboat, in China as part of the Sino-Japanese War. The incident killed three people.
In 1968, Arthur Ashe became the first Black American to be ranked No. 1 in tennis in the United States.
In 1975, Sara Jane Moore said she willfully tried to kill U.S. President Gerald Ford. She was sentenced to life in prison but released Dec. 31, 2007.
In 1980, a U.S. oil tycoon spent $5 million at auction for a notebook written by Leonardo da Vinci. The 36 pages of notes featured "remarkably illegible right-to-left writing" and was "illustrated with marginal sketches of a technical nature."
In 1985, the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, a military charter, on takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killed all 256 people aboard, including 248 U.S. soldiers.
In 1988, three trains collided in London, killing 35 people, Britain's worst railway accident in 21 years.
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 it was reversing the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court allowing hand recount of votes in Florida, in effect ensuring the Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush would win the presidency over former Vice President Al Gore.
In 2015, Saudis elected women to municipal councils for the first time in Saudi Arabian history.
In 2019, a project to map the topography of land beneath Antarctica's ice sheet revealed the world's deepest land canyon underneath Denman Glacier.
In 2022, a shootout in Wieambilla, Queensland, Australia, left two police officers and a bystander dead. After a 6-hour siege, authorities killed the three alleged shooters.
A thought for the day: "One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier." -- French novelist Gustave Flaubert
