On This Day:
Monday December 9, 2013 This is the 343rd day of the year, with 22 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: clown A clown is a character of pantomime and circus, known by the distinctive makeup and costume, ludicrous antics, and buffoonery. The earliest ancestors of the clown flourished in ancient Greece and Rome; they were bald-headed buffoons who performed in farces and mime, parodying the actions of more serious characters and sometimes pelting the spectators with nuts. The clown formed part of the acts of medieval minstrels and jugglers but was not considered a professional comic actor until the late Middle Ages when traveling entertainers imitated the antics of the court jesters. The traditional whiteface makeup of the clown was likely introduced by the character of Pierrot (or Pedrolino), the French clown with a bald head and flour-whitened face who first appeared during the latter part of the 17th century. Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns.
Holidays Tanzania: National Day/ Independence and Republic Day (from Britain, 1961).
Feast day of the Seven Martyrs of Samosata, St. Peter Fourier, St. Budoc or Beuzec, St. Gorgonia, and St. Leocadia.
Events 1621 - The first sermon was delivered in New England, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, by Robert Cushman.
1792 - America's first formal cremation took place near Charleston, South Carolina.
1793 - Noah Webster established New York City's first daily newspaper, "The American Minerva."
1884 - Ball-bearing roller skates were patented by Levant M. Richardson.
1907 - Christmas seals went on sale for the first time, at the Wilmington, Delaware post office; proceeds went to fight tuberculosis.
1941 - China declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy.
1949 - Chiang Kai-shek lost control of Peking, and his Nationalist forces fled the Chinese mainland, settling on the island of Formosa, which would later become the independent Chinese republic of Taiwan.
1958 - The anti-Communist John Birch Society was formed in Indianapolis.
1975 - President Gerald Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan-authorization that officials of New York City and New York State said would prevent a city default.
1987 - In Israel, the first riots of the Palestinian intifada erupted on the occupied Gaza Strip in protest of Israeli occupation of former Arab territory in the Middle East.
1990 - In Poland, Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity trade union, won a landslide victory over transitional Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki, becoming the first democratically-elected Polish leader in over six decades.
1990 - Slobodan Milosovic (Serbian Socialist Party) was elected president in Serbia's first free elections in 50 years.
1992 - Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation.
2002 - United Airlines filed the biggest bankruptcy in aviation history after losing $4 billion in the previous two years.
Births 1608 - John Milton, English poet.
1886 - Clarence Birdseye, American inventor of the deep-freezing process.
1898 - Emmett Kelly, American clown.
1899 - Jean de Brunhoff, French illustrator and author, creator of the Babar series.
1918 - Kirk Douglas, American film actor.
1930 - Buck Henry, American actor, writer and director.
1957 - Donny Osmond, singer, musician, actor and former teen idol.
Deaths 1641 - Anthony Van Dyck, 17th century Flemish painter.
1996 - Mary Douglas Leakey, English-born archaeologist and paleoanthropologist and wife of noted anthropologist Louis Leakey.
2003 - United States senator Paul Simon, American politician.
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