more events on December 1
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2001
Trans World Airlines’ final flight following the carrier’s purchase by American Airlines; TWA began operating 76 years earlier. The final flight, 220, piloted by Capt. Bill Compton, landed at St. Louis International Airport.
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1991
Ukraine’s voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the USSR.
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1990
Channel Tunnel sections from France and the UK meet beneath the English Channel.
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1989
East Germany’s parliament changes its constitution, abolishing a section that gave the Communist Party the leading role in the state.
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1988
Benazir Bhutto, politician, becomes the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state
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1986
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North pleads the 5th Amendment before a Senate panel investigating the Iran-Contra arms sale.
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1981
AIDS virus officially recognized.
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1971
Indian Army recaptures part of Kashmir, which had been occupied by Pakistan.
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1969
America’s first draft lottery since 1942 is held.
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1966
Andrew Adamson, New Zealand film director, producer, screenwriter (Shrek; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe); he was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006.
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1958
Candace Bushnell, author (Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries).
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1955
Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, defying the South’s segregationist laws.
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1949
Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord whose Medellin Cartel killed thousands.
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1945
Bette Midler, singer, songwriter, actress, producer; her awards include 3 Grammys, 4 Golden Globes, 3 Emmys and a special Tony for her contribution to Broadway (1974).
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1942
National gasoline rationing goes into effect in the United States.
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1941
The first Civil Air Patrol is organized in the United States.
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Great Britain declares a state of emergency in Malaya following reports of Japanese attacks.
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Japan’s Tojo rejects U.S. proposals for a Pacific settlement as fantastic and unrealistic.
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1940
Richard Pryor, influential comedian, actor, satirist.
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1935
Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg], American actor, writer and director (Annie Hall).
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1934
Josef Stalin’s aide, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated in Leningrad.
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1933
Nazi storm troops become an official organ of the Reich.
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1925
Martin Rodbell, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist.
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After a seven-year occupation, 7,000 British troops evacuate Cologne, Germany.
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1918
An American army of occupation enters Germany.
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1916
King Constantine of Greece refuses to surrender to the Allies.
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1913
Mary Martin, American actress.
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1909
President William Howard Taft severs official relations with Nicaragua’s Zelaya government and declares support for the revolutionaries.
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1908
The Italian Parliament debates the future of the Triple Alliance and asks for compensation for Austria’s action in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
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1905
Twenty officers and 230 guards are arrested in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the revolt at the Winter Palace.
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1900
Kaiser Wilhelm II refuses to meet with Boer leader Paul Kruger in Berlin.
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1886
Rex Stout, writer, creator of detective character Nero Wolfe.
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1881
Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz.
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1863
Oliver Herford, American humorist and poet.
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Belle Boyd, a Confederate spy, is released from prison in Washington.
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1862
President Abraham Lincoln gives the State of the Union address to the 37th Congress.
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1861
The U.S. gunboat Penguin seizes the Confederate blockade runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000.
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1847
Julia Moore, poet.
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1761
Madame Tussaud, Swiss-born modeller in wax who founded the world-famous exhibition on London’s Baker Street.
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1581
Edmund Champion and other Jesuit martyrs are hanged at Tyburn, England, for sedition, after being tortured.
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1135
Henry I of England dies and the crown is passed to his nephew Stephen of Bloise.