December 11
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Featured Event
© New York Daily News/Getty Images
Cash and jewels worth more than $5 million were stolen from an air cargo building at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on this day in 1978. Only one person was ever convicted in connection with the Lufthansa heist, and almost none of the stolen money was recovered. [Read today’s edition of Today in History >>]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
© Jacques Brinon—AP/REX/Shutterstock.com
You only have power over people so long as you do not take everything away from them. But when you have robbed man of everything, he is no longer in your pocket—he is free.
Born this day in 1918, Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—best known for The Gulag Archipelago, which chronicles the U.S.S.R.’s vast system of prisons and labour camps—received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1970.
Famous Birthdays
More on December 11
age fotostock/Alamy
2012
Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, who was influential in stimulating Western appreciation of Indian music, died at age 92. [How much do you know about India?]
U.S. Department of Defense
1998
The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recommended three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, to which would be added a fourth article the following day, for actions taken in connection with his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. [Take our quiz about U.S. political scandals.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1994
Russian troops invaded Chechnya in an effort to suppress the government led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, who, as the republic’s president, had declared Chechnya’s independence in 1991. [Test your knowledge of Russian history.]
© PL Gould/Images Press—Archive Photos/Getty Images
1981
American boxer Muhammad Ali fought his last professional bout, losing to Trevor Berbick in a decision. [How much do you know about boxing?]
NASA
1972
Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the last humans to walk on the Moon. [Watch a video of Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt singing on the Moon.]
Copyright © 1969 Columbia Pictures, all rights reserved.
1967
The Oscar-winning film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a lesson in racial tolerance, premiered in New York City; it starred Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy (in his last movie), and Sidney Poitier. [Test your knowledge of cinema.]
© Vladgalenko/Dreamstime.com
1946
UNICEF—a United Nations program devoted to improving the health, nutrition, education, and general welfare of children—was established. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about world organizations.]
Heinrich Hoffmann, Munich
1941
Adolf Hitler declared that Germany was at war with the United States following Japanese attacks on the U.S., British, and Dutch positions in the Pacific and in East Asia. [Take our World War II quiz.]
Camera Press/Globe Photos
1936
Edward VIII’s abdication as king of the United Kingdom was formally approved. He is the only sovereign to voluntarily resign the British crown, which he did to marry American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson.
EPA/REX/Shutterstock.com
1911
Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Cairo. [Learn how Nobel Prize winners are selected.]
Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1845
The Sonderbund was formed by the seven Roman Catholic conservative Swiss cantons (Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais) to oppose anti-Catholic measures by Protestant liberal cantons. These tensions culminated in a brief civil war in 1847.