1 of 3 | Rescue workers inspect the truck that crashed into a Christmas market close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin, Germany, on December 19, 2016. File Photo by Paul Zinken/EPA
Today is Tuesday, Dec. 19, the 353rd day of 2023 with 12 to go.
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 King Philip V of Spain in 1683; women’s suffrage leader Mary Livermore in 1820; novelist Eleanor Porter in 1868; baseball Hall of Fame member Ford Frick in 1894; Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in 1906; French singer Edith Piaf in 1915; country singer Little Jimmy Dickens in 1920; actor Cicely Tyson in 1924; baseball Hall of Fame member Al Kaline in 1934; folk singer Phil Ochs in 1940; British rock musician Alvin Lee in 1944; actor Tim Reid in 1944 (age 79); bluegrass musician John McEuen in 1945 (age 78); actor Robert Urich in 1946; actor Jennifer Beals in 1963 (age 60); actor Robert MacNaughton in 1966 (age 57); magician Criss Angel, born Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos, in 1967 (age 56); model/actor Tyson Beckford in 1970 (age 53); actor Alyssa Milano in 1972 (age 51); actor Jake Gyllenhaal in 1980 (age 43); actor Marla Sokoloff in 1980 (age 43); actor Annie Murphy in 1986 (age 37); actor Keiynan Lonsdale in 1991 (age 32); singer King Princess, born Mikaela Straus, in 1998 (age 25).
On this date in history:
In 1777, Gen. George Washington and the Continental Army began a winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pa.
In 1946 the First Indochina War began with Vietnamese troops under Ho Chi Minh clashing with the French at Hanoi.
In 1958, the U.S. satellite SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), launched aboard an Atlas rocket, transmitted the first radio voice broadcast from space, a 58-word recorded Christmas greeting from President Dwight Eisenhower.
In 1972, the splashdown of Apollo 17 ended the United States’ manned moon exploration program. “It’s a beautiful day,” astronaut Eugene Cernan said upon exiting the command module.
In 1974, Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford.
In 1984, the prime ministers of Britain and China signed an agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
In 1998, Bill Clinton became the second U.S. president to be impeached (Andrew Johnson was the first) by the House of Representatives, which approved articles charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice. Like Johnson, he was acquitted by the Senate.
In 2006, a Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a doctor to death for deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV.
In 2012, Britain announced it would begin a gradual withdrawal of its forces in Afghanistan in April 2013.
In 2012, South Koreans headed to the polls to elect Park Geun-hye as the nation’s first female president.
In 2013, Target, confirming a security breach, said criminals stole credit and debit card information millions of people who shopped in its stores in the post-Thanksgiving period.
In 2016, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker drove a truck into a group of people at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring dozens more. The driver, Anis Amri, was killed days later in Milan when confronted by police.
In 2018, President Donald Trump announced the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, declaring victory over the Islamic State.
A thought for the day: “I’ve always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development.” — American first daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth