1857 John Paton is licensed to preach the gospel. As a tract distributor in Glasgow Scotland, he will go door to door winning souls. Eventually, he becomes a missionary in the New Hebrides islands.
1913 Ford Motor Company institutes world’s 1st moving assembly line for the Model T Ford
1916 Father Charles de Foucauld is martyred at his mission in the Sahara.
1934 Leningrad mayor Sergey Kirov is assassinated and Joseph Stalin uses it as an excuse to begin his Great Purge of 1934-38
1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama
1988 Benazir Bhutto named 1st female Prime Minister of a Muslim country (Pakistan)
1999 Cuban Communists declare that henceforth citizens will be allowed to celebrate Christmas as an official holiday.
Today’s Historical Events
Today in Film & TV
1953 Hugh Hefner publishes 1st edition of Playboy magazine, featuring Marilyn Monroe as the magazine’s 1st centerfold
2003 “The Return of the King”, 3rd and final film in the Lord of the Rings series, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen premieres in Wellington, New Zealand
Today in Sport
1973 Jack Nicklaus finishes at 13-under-par 275 to win the Walt Disney World Open by 1 stroke from Mason Rudolph; becomes the first player to reach $2 million in PGA Tour career earnings
Do you know this fact about today? Did You Know?
1952 The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation
