Dec. 12 (UPI) -- In this date in history:
In 1870, Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina was sworn in as the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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1 of 6 | USS Panay sinking after Japanese air attack on Nanking, China, on December 12, 1937, in what became known as the Panay incident. File Photo courtesy the U.S. Signal Corps
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 African 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.
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File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
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 40 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.
File Photo by Joe Mitchell/UPI
In 2006, a Baghdad suicide bomber, luring unemployed Iraqis to his truck with promises of work, killed at least 70 people and injured more than 220 others.
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In 2015, Saudis elected women to municipal councils for the first time in Saudi Arabian history.
In 2018, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's onetime personal lawyer, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, excessive campaign contribution, unlawful corporate contribution and false statements to a bank.
File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
