On This Day:
Monday December 16, 2013 This is the 350th day of the year, with 15 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: bird feathers Bird feathers are made mainly of beta keratin, which is also found in human hair and nails. Feathers have a central shaft (rachis). On each side of the shaft, hooks called barbs lock together like a zipper to make a flat part called the vane. Tiny hummingbirds have fewer than 1,000 feathers while swans have more than 25,000. Birds have three different types of feathers: contour feathers cover the body, flight feathers make a smooth wing surface, and down feathers keep the bird warm. Feathers are unique to birds.
Holidays Feast day of St. Irenion, Saints Ananiah, Azariah, and Michael, and St. Adelaide.
Bahrain: Independence Day (from Britain, 1971).
Bangladesh: Victory Day.
Kazakhstan: Republic Day.
South Africa: Reconciliation Day.
Mexico: beginning of Posadas.
Events 1653 - Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
1773 - The Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.
1809 - Napoleon was granted a divorce from his wife Josephine; he divorced her because she had not produced children.
1811 - In the Mississippi River Valley near New Madrid, Missouri, the greatest series of earthquakes in United States history occurred with a quake of an estimated 8.6 magnitude on the Richter scale. The earthquake greatly changed the topography of the region, but it was sparsely inhabited at the time and there were no known fatalities.
1925 - One of the deadliest earthquakes in history hit the Gansu province of midwestern China, and caused massive landslides and the deaths of over 200,000 people. It measured 8.5 on the Richter scale.
1944 - The Battle of the Bulge, the last major offensive of German forces against the Allies, began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium during World War II.
1951 - "Dragnet" premiered on television.
1960 - A United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over New York City, killing 134 people.
1978 - Cleveland became the first U.S. city to default since the Depression.
1996 - Britain's agriculture minister announced the slaughter of an additional 100,000 cows thought to be at risk of contracting BSE (mad cow disease) in an effort to persuade the EU to lift its ban on British beef.
2000 - President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state.
Births 1485 - Catherine of Aragon, 1st wife of King Henry VIII of England, who bore him five children.
1770 - Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer.
1775 - Jane Austen, British author.
1863 - George Santayana, Spanish-born American philosopher/poet.
1899 - Sir Noel Coward, English actor, director, playwright, and composer.
1901 - Margaret Mead, American anthropologist, who wrote 44 books and over 1000 articles.
1917 - Arthur C. Clark, English science fiction writer.
Deaths 1859 - Wilhelm Carl Grimm, German philologist and folklorist who teamed up with his brother, Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (Brothers Grimm) to write many folk songs and folktales.
1944 - Glenn Miller, American trombonist, composer, and bandleader, presumably in an airplane crash (no bodies or wreckage were ever found) over water while in the military during World War II.
1980 - Colonel Harlan Sanders, founder of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) restaurants.
2005 - Jack Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning American newspaper columnist, considered one of the fathers of modern investigative journalism. He was 83.
2007 - Dan Fogelberg, American singer and songwriter.
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