On this day: December 21
The Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock, the first crossword puzzle is published, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" premieres, Gen. Patton dies, and Elvis visits Nixon at the White House, all on this day.
1620: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Mass.
1620: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Mass.
1861: Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. The award would eventually become the Navy Medal of Honor.
1879: Henrik Ibsen's play "A Doll's House" premieres at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, having been published earlier that month. Pictured is the play's original manuscript cover page.
1891: Eighteen students play the first public game of basketball, using a soccer ball and two peach baskets, in Springfield, Mass. The game was the invention of James Naismith, a Canadian-American who was a physical education instructor at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield.
1898: Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover the radioactive element radium. In 1903, they would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing the honor with Henri Becquerel, a French physicist and Marie Curie's professor.
1913: Arthur Wynne's "word-cross," frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.
1925: Sergei Eisenstein's silent film "Battleship Potemkin" is first shown in Moscow, Russia. The film, which presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime, has been called one of the most influential propaganda films of all time.
1926: Joe Paterno, the head coach of the college football Penn State Nittany Lions from 1966 to 2011, is born in Brooklyn, N.Y. Although he once led all major college football coaches in career victories with 409, the NCAA vacated all of Penn State's wins from 1998 through 2011 as part of its punishment for the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, eliminating 111 of the games Paterno had coached and won. Paterno's career ended with his dismissal from the team in 2011 for his role in the scandal and he died of complications from lung cancer on Jan. 22, 2012.
1935: Talk show host Phil Donahue, best known as the creator and host of "The Phil Donahue Show," the first to use a talk show format, is born in Cleveland, Ohio.
1937: Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood. The film receives a standing ovation from a star-studded audience that included such celebrities as Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Jack Benny, Fred MacMurray and Clark Gable. Following successful exclusive runs in New York City and Miami, RKO Radio Pictures put the film into general release on Feb. 4, 1938. It would go on to become a major box-office success, making four times more money than any other motion picture released in 1938.
1937: Actress Jane Fonda, whose best known roles include the movies "Barbarella," "Cat Ballou," "They Shoot Horses Don't They," "Klute," "Coming Home" and "On Golden Pond," is born in New York City. Fonda, who has won two Academy Awards and been nominated another five times, is also known for her political activism and as a fitness guru, producing and starring in more than 20 exercise videos.
1940: American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby" and widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, dies of a heart attack at the age of 44 in Hollywood, Calif.
1940: Rock musician, composer and film director Frank Zappa is born in Baltimore, Md. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz and orchestral works, and produced nearly all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers.
1945: Gen. George Smith Patton Jr., best known for his leadership during World War II, dies of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 60 in Heidelberg, Germany, 12 days after suffering a cervical spinal cord injury in a car accident and being paralyzed from the neck down. Patton, who developed a reputation for eccentricity and for sometimes-controversial gruff outspokenness, commanded corps and armies during World War II in North Africa, Sicily and the European Theater of Operations. In 1944, he assumed command of the U.S. Third Army, which under his leadership advanced farther, captured more enemy prisoners, and liberated more territory in less time than any other army in history. He was also the focus of the epic 1970 Academy Award-winning film "Patton," with the title role played by George C. Scott.
1948: Actor Samuel L. Jackson, best known for his movie roles in "Jungle Fever," "Pulp Fiction," "Unbreakable" and "Snakes on a Plane," is born in Washington, D.C.
1954: Tennis player Chris Evert is born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Evert won her first major championship at the French Open in 1974 and her last at Roland Garros in 1986. During that period, she captured at least one Grand Slam title a year (including a record seven French Opens), for a total of 18 in her career.
1957: Comedian and actor Ray Romano, best known for his roles on the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" and in the animated "Ice Age" film series, is born in Queens, N.Y.
1959: Sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, a five-time Olympic medalist, including three gold medals at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, is born in Los Angeles, Calif.
1966: Actor Kiefer Sutherland, best known for his role as tough guy Jack Bauer on the real-time TV hit "24," and for roles in movies such as "The Lost Boys" and "Dark City," is born in London, England.
1967: Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, after living for 18 days following the transplant.
1967: The comedy-drama "The Graduate," starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Harris, and directed by Mike Nichols, premieres in Los Angeles. The film tells the story of Benjamin Braddock (Hoffman), a recent university graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who is seduced by an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Bancroft), and then proceeds to fall in love with her daughter Elaine (Ross). It would go on to make more than $104 million at the box office and earn seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Hoffman, Best Actress for Bancroft and Best Supporting Actress for Ross. It won one Oscar, Best Director for Nichols.
1968: Apollo 8, the second manned mission in the Apollo space program, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It would become the first manned space craft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it and return safely to Earth. The three-astronaut crew -- Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders -- became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit.
1968: David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash premiere together as Crosby, Stills & Nash in California.
1970: Elvis Presley goes to the White House to volunteer his services to U.S. President Richard Nixon on fighting the nation's drug problems. Presley gives Nixon a chrome-plated Colt .45 and Nixon gives Elvis a Narcotics Bureau badge.
1978: Police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrest John Wayne Gacy Jr. and begin digging up his property for the remains of 29 of the 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of killing. Gacy would be sentenced to death in March 1980 and be executed on May 10, 1994.
1981: The University of Cincinnati beats Bradley University 75-73 in seven overtimes, setting an NCAA record that still stands today.
1988: A bomb explodes on board New York-bound Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, killing all 259 people on the plane and 11 more on the ground. In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was jailed for the bombing, but he was released in August 2009 by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, remaining the only person to be convicted for the attack.
1992: Blues musician Albert King, a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing whose best-known song was 1967's "Born Under a Bad Sign," dies of a heart attack at the age of 69 in Memphis, Tenn. In December 2012, King was announced as 2013 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
1995: The city of Bethlehem, West Bank, which the New Testament identifies as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth, passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
2001: Sports journalist Dick Schaap, who won five Emmys during a career that spanned 37 years, dies at the age of 67 in New York City from complications following a hip replacement surgery that had taken place in September.
2005: Elton John and his partner David Furnish take part in a civil ceremony to make their union official. Guests at the ceremony, which takes place in Windsor, England, include George Michael, Sharon Stone, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Furnish and John are seen here in 2011.
