Today in History
By Associated Press
Dec. 6
In 1907, the worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurred as at least 361 men and boys died in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia.
In 1917, more than 1,700 people were killed when an explosives-laden French cargo ship, the Mont Blanc, collided with the Norwegian vessel Imo at the harbor in Halifax, Nova Scotia, setting off a blast that devastated the Canadian city.
In 1923, a presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as Calvin Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.
In 1957, America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV3 rose about four feet off a Cape Canaveral launch pad before crashing down and exploding.
In 1969, a free concert by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, California, was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club that was hired to provide concert security.
In 1973, House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew.
In 1998, in Venezuela, former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier, was elected president.
Dec. 7
In 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1972, America’s last crewed moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
In 1982, convicted murderer Charlie Brooks Jr. became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by lethal injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas.
In 1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people.
In 1993, six people were killed and 19 wounded in a mass shooting aboard a Long Island Rail Road train in New York.
In 2004, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.
In 2018, James Alex Fields Jr., who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Virginia, was convicted of first-degree murder.
—From AP reports
