On This Day:
Saturday December 7, 2013 This is the 341st day of the year, with 24 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: Equatorial Guinea The small west-central African nation of Equatorial Guinea is the only African nation whose official language is Spanish.
Holidays Feast day of St. Martin of Saujon, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Eutychianus, St. Servus, and St. Buithe or Boethius.
Ivory Coast Republic: Independence Day (from France, 1960).
United States: Pearl Harbor Day.
United States, Delaware: Delaware Day.
Events 43 B.C.E. - Cicero of Rome was assassinated on the orders of Marcus Antonius.
1431 - Henry VI of England was crowned King of France.
1787 - Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States of America, also making it the first state of the modern United States.
1796 - Electors chose John Adams to be the second President of the United States of America.
1808 - James Madison was elected President of the United States of America, succeeding Thomas Jefferson.
1836 - Martin Van Buren was elected the eighth President of the United States of America.
1842 - The New York Philharmonic gave its first concert.
1917 - The United States declared war on Austria-Hungary.
1941 - Japanese forces attacked the home base of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and other British and American territories and possessions in the Pacific.
1942 - U.S. Navy launched USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.
1944 - The U.S. formally announced that all six Japanese aircraft carriers involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor were sunk.
1972 - America's last manned moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
1975 - Indonesian forces launched a massive invasion of the former Portuguese half of the island of Timor, which lies between Indonesia and Australia.
1988 - A 6.9 magnitude earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia; official estimates put the death toll at 25,000.
2002 - Iraq handed over its arms declaration to the United Nations, denying it had weapons of mass destruction.
2004 - Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's first popularly elected, post-Taliban president.
Births 1810 - Theodor Schwann, German physiologist.
1863 - R.W. Sears, American entrepreneur, founder of Sears, Roebuck and Company.
1876 - Willa Cather, American author and Pulitzer Prize winner.
1924 - Mario Soares, Portuguese politician.
1928 - Noam Chomsky, American linguist, educator, political activist.
1942 - Harry Chapin, American singer and songwriter.
1956 - Larry Bird, former NBA basketball player.
Deaths 1817 - William Bligh, English admiral of the HMS Bounty during the mutiny of the ship.
1975 - Thornton Wilder, American playwright and novelist.
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