On This Day:
Sunday December 15, 2013 This is the 349th day of the year, with 16 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of Australia. It stretches for 1,250 miles and covers an area of 14,300 square miles. The Great Barrier Reef includes about 350 species of brightly colored hard corals, responsible for the formation of the reef, and about 1,500 species of birds, fish, and other varieties of underwater life. It is the largest living coral reef system on the planet. While some parts of the Great Barrier Reef date back more than two million years, the majority of the reef began to develop about 500,000 years ago. The Great Barrier Reef is being damaged by global warming, pollution, the huge number of tourists who visit it each year, and the crown-of-thorns starfish, a natural predator of corals.
Holidays Feast day of St. Nino, St. Valerian, St. Mary di Rosa, and St. Paul of Latros.
Curacao: Kingdom Day and Antillean Flag Day.
Events 1654 - A meteorological office established in Tuscany, Italy, began recording daily temperature readings.
1791 - The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, went into effect following ratification by Virginia.
1890 - Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, South Dakota, in a fight with Indian police.
1916 - The French defeated the Germans in the World War I Battle of Verdun.
1938 - Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial took place in Washington, D.C.
1939 - Nylon was first produced commercially, in Delaware.
1939 - The motion picture "Gone With the Wind" premiered in Atlanta.
1948 - Former State Department official Alger Hiss was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on charges of perjury.
1973 - Jean Paul Getty III, the grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, was found alive in southern Italy five months after his kidnapping. Getty, who was named the richest man in the world in 1957, initially refused to pay his grandson's 3.2-million dollar ransom, and only cooperated after the boy's severed right ear was sent to a newspaper in Rome. The elder Getty was born on this day in 1892.
1986 - Carnegie Hall reopened after its $50 million renovation.
1996 - Boeing and McDonnell Douglas aircraft manufacturers announced that they would merge, creating the world's largest aerospace company.
Births 37 - Nero, Roman emperor.
1832 - Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, French engineer and builder of the Eiffel Tower.
1861 - Charles Duryea, American automobile inventor.
1883 - William A. Hinton, American developer of the "Hinton Test" for diagnosing syphilis.
1892 - J. Paul Getty, American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company.
Deaths 1890 - Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), Indian chief of the Sioux tribes.
1943 - Fats Waller (Thomas Wright Waller), American jazz pianist and composer.
1966 - Walt Disney, American motion-picture and television producer and founder of the Disney Company.
2005 - William Proxmire, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin.
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