On this day: December 13
Sir Francis Drake sets out around the world, the National Guard is born, Al Gore concedes, and Saddam Hussein is caught, all on this day.
1545: The Council of Trent begins. The ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church would meet for 25 sessions over the next 18 years, issuing reform decrees and specifying Catholic doctrine on salvation, the sacraments and the Biblical canon, as an answer to Protestant disputes.
1545: The Council of Trent begins. The ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church would meet for 25 sessions over the next 18 years, issuing reform decrees and specifying Catholic doctrine on salvation, the sacraments and the Biblical canon, as an answer to Protestant disputes.
1577: Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.
1636: The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.
1769: Dartmouth College is founded by the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, with a Royal Charter from King George III, on land donated by Royal Governor John Wentworth. This is the earliest known image of the Ivy League school, which appeared in the February 1793 issue of Massachusetts Magazine.
1818: Mary Todd Lincoln, who would go on to become the first lady as President Abraham Lincoln's wife, is born in Lexington, Ky.
1924: American labor leader Samuel Gompers dies at the age of 74 in San Antonio, Texas. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death.
1925: Actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke, who would go on to star in the films "Bye Bye Birdie," "Mary Poppins" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and in the TV series "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Diagnosis: Murder," is born in West Plains, Mo.
1929: Actor Christopher Plummer, whose film roles include "The Sound of Music," "The Last Station" and "Beginners," is born in Toronto, Canada. Plummer won an Academy Award for Best Actor at the age of 82 in 2012 for "Beginners," making him the oldest actor ever to win an Oscar.
1943: Hall of Fame baseball player Ferguson Jenkins, a three-time All-Star and the 1971 National League Cy Young Award winner, is born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. During a 19-year career that saw him rack up 3,192 strikeouts and 284 wins, he pitched for four different teams, spending the majority of his career with the Chicago Cubs. He is the first Canadian to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1948: Rock musician Ted Nugent, whose hits include "Stranglehold," "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Wango Tango", and "Great White Buffalo," is born in Redford, Mich. He is also known for his staunch conservative political views and his strong defense and support of hunting and gun ownership rights.
1949: The first Knesset of Israel votes to move the young country's capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
1957: Actor Steve Buscemi, best known for "Reservoir Dogs," "Fargo" and "Boardwalk Empire," is born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
1957: Singer Morris Day, best known as the lead singer of The Time, is born in Minneapolis, Minn. Day's most prolific and visible period came in mid-1980s, when he played the antagonist to Prince in "Purple Rain" and "Graffiti Bridge" and the Time released the singles "Jungle Love" and "The Bird."
1961: Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John" becomes country music's first million-selling record.
1961: Painter Grandma Moses, who turned to painting in her 70s and became one of America's most popular artists, dies at the age of 101 in Hoosick Falls, N.Y.
1962: NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit. The satellite, which would provided the first television transmissions across the Pacific Ocean, is still in orbit today.
1967: Actor and singer Jamie Foxx, who won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic "Ray" and has also appeared in movies like "Any Given Sunday," "Collateral" and "Dreamgirls," is born in Terrell, Texas.
1975: Foghat's single "Slow Ride" is released. It would become the band's top single, peaking at No. 20 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
1977: A DC-3 aircraft chartered from the Indianapolis-based National Jet crashes near Evansville Regional Airport, killing 29, including the University of Evansville basketball team, support staff and boosters of the team.
1981: Singer-songwriter Amy Lee, lead singer of the hard rock band Evanescence, is born in Riverside, Calif.
1988: Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat gives a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in the Swiss city of Geneva after United States authorities refused to give him a visa to enter New York.
1989: Country music singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a No. 1 song on the country chart, is born in Reading, Pa.
1996: The movie "Jerry Maguire," starring Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger and Cuba Gooding Jr., and directed by Cameron Crowe, premieres in theaters. The movie would debut at No. 1 at the box office on its way to making $273 million worldwide and earning five Academy Award nominations, with Gooding Jr. winning for Best Supporting Actor.
2000: Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Al Gore concedes the U.S. presidential election to Republican candidate George W. Bush.
2002: Cardinal Bernard Law resigns as Boston archbishop in response to the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal after church documents were revealed suggesting he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese.
2003: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured by U.S. forces near his home town of Tikrit in a mission code named Operation Red Dawn. Soldiers found the former Iraqi president in a "spider hole" underneath a mud hut compound. Despite being armed with a pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle, and provisioned with $750,000 in cash, Hussein did not resist capture.
2007: After earlier opting out of the final years of the record 10-year, $252 million contract he signed in 2000, shortstop Alex Rodriguez signs a 10-year, $275 million deal with the New York Yankees, marking the biggest contract in sports history.
2007: The Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball is released, implicating 89 players, including seven MVPs and 31 All-Stars. The 409-page report also advances certain recommendations regarding the handling of past illegal drug use and future prevention practices.
