Today is Wednesday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2023 with 18 to follow.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include Pope Sixtus V in 1520; former U.S. first lady Mary Todd Lincoln in 1818; World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York in 1887; former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in 1920; baseball Hall of Fame member Larry Doby, the first Black American League player, in 1923; comedian/actor/dancer Dick Van Dyke in 1925 (age 98); actor Christopher Plummer in 1929; singer/actor John Davidson in 1941 (age 82); baseball Hall of Fame member Ferguson “Fergie” Jenkins in 1942 (age 81); political figure Herman Cain in 1945; rock singer Ted Nugent in 1948 (age 75); actor Wendie Malick in 1950 (age 73); actor Steve Buscemi in 1957 (age 66); actor Johnny Whitaker in 1959 (age 64); actor Jamie Foxx in 1967 (age 56); rock musician Tom DeLonge in 1975 (age 48); rock singer Amy Lee in 1981 (age 42); golfer Rickie Fowler in 1988 (age 35); singer Taylor Swift in 1989 (age 34); author Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt in 1989 (age 34); actor Emma Corrin in 1995 (age 28); actor Maisy Stella in 2003 (age 20).
On this date in history:
In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand.
In 1816, the United States’ first savings bank, the Provident Institution for Savings, opened in Boston.
In 1862, Union troops suffered a major defeat in the Civil War battle of Fredericksburg. An estimated 12,000 northern soldiers were killed or injured, about three times the toll suffered by Confederate forces.
In 1937, the Nanjing Massacre began, during which Japanese troops killed between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers. The episode lasted six weeks as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
In 1981, martial law was imposed in Poland.
In 1982, the Sentry armored car company in New York discovered the overnight theft of $8 million from its headquarters. It was the biggest cash theft in U.S. history at the time.
In 1998, in a non-binding referendum giving Puerto Ricans the opportunity to express a political preference, most voters indicated they wished to remain a U.S. commonwealth.
In 2000, seven inmates — later dubbed the “Texas Seven” — escaped from prison, sparking a six-week manhunt. The men robbed a sporting-goods store on Christmas Eve, killing a police officer.
In 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law, under fire for allegedly protecting priests accused of abusing minors, resigned as Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston. Pope John Paul II put Law in charge of a basilica in Rome in 2004.
In 2003, a bearded and apparently disoriented Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi president, was captured by U.S. troops in a small underground hideout southeast of his hometown of Tikrit, ending an eight-month manhunt.
In 2007, a landmark report implicated 89 U.S. Major League Baseball players, some of them prominent figures of the era, in the use of steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, codifying marriage rights for interracial and same-sex couples.
A thought for the day: “Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.” — American civil rights activist Ella J. Baker