December 15
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Featured Event
Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.
A citywide celebration accompanied the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, Georgia, on this day in 1939. Actresses Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel and director Victor Fleming were among those who won Academy Awards for their work on a film that has a controversial legacy. [Read today’s edition of Today in History >>]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
AP/REX/Shutterstock.com
Only think of two things—the report of the pistol and the tape. When you hear the one, just run like hell till you break the other.
British athlete Harold Abrahams, born this day in 1899, won a gold medal in the 100-metre dash at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, a victory that became the subject of the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire (1981).
Famous Birthdays
More on December 15
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
2011
The Iraq War officially ended when the United States formally declared that its mission in Iraq was over. [Read about eight of the deadliest wars of the 21st century.]
© Corbis
2001
The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened in Pisa, Italy, after more than 10 years of work to stabilize the structure. [Take our quiz about the history of architecture.]
©Carolina K. Smith, M.D./Shutterstock.com
1997
The U.S. Department of Defense ordered that all Americans in its service (about 2.5 million people) be inoculated against anthrax, a potential weapon of biological warfare. [Test your knowledge of weapons and warfare.]
Keystone/Hulton Archive /Getty Images
1997
Janet Jagan was elected president of Guyana, becoming the first elected female president in South America and the first white president of Guyana. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about South America.]
© Peter Turnley—Corbis/Getty Images
1989
Antigovernment demonstrations erupted in Timișoara, Romania, beginning the revolution that toppled the communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu from power a few days afterward. [Test your knowledge of plots and revolutions.]
Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library
1987
Septima Poinsette Clark, an educator and civil rights activist who became director of education and teaching of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s, died on Johns Island in South Carolina. [Explore a timeline of the American civil rights movement.]
© Bettmann/Getty Images
1948
Alger Hiss, a former U.S. government official, was indicted on two charges of perjury in connection with accusations of membership in a communist espionage ring during the 1930s. The Hiss case was one of the most publicized espionage incidents of the Cold War. [Read about 10 notable spies from across history.]
Claus C. Meyer/Black Star
1907
Oscar Niemeyer, an early exponent of Modernist architecture in Latin America and a cowinner of the 1988 Pritzker Architecture Prize, was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Test your knowledge of architecture and architects.]
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-12277)
1890
The Lakota (Teton) chief Sitting Bull was killed on the Grand River in South Dakota by Native police and soldiers who had been sent by the U.S. government to arrest him so as to prevent him from leading an insurrection.
United States National Archives, Washington, D.C.
1791
The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Bill of Rights, traditionally defined as a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and limitations on federal and state governments—were adopted as a single unit. [How much do you know about the amendments to the U.S. Constitution?]
© Photos.com/Getty Images
37 ce
Nero, who became infamous for his personal debaucheries and extravagances as the fifth Roman emperor, was born. [Did Nero really fiddle as Rome burned?]