This Week in History – December 27-January 2
December 27, 1993 – By executive order, Democrat President Bill Clinton implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the disastrous pact that cost American jobs, suppressed Americans’ wages, and put Mexican farms out of business, a gap filled by international narcotics cartels.
December 28, 1714 – George Whitefield, called “the marvel of his age” for the way his preaching could move an audience, is born in Gloucester, England. His message kicked off America’s first “Great Awakening.”
December 28, 1732 – Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Richard Saunders begins publication of “Poor Richard’s Almanack.”
December 28, 1973 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes “Gulag Archipelago” – a literary investigation of the police-state system under the socialist-communist Soviet Union.
December 29, 1849 – The Christmas carol “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” by pastor Edmund H. Sears, appears for the first time in The Christian Register.
December 29, 1851 – The first Y.M.C.A. (Young Men’s Christian Association) in the United States is organized in Boston.
December 29, 1876 – Hymnwriter Philip P. Bliss and his wife fall to their deaths when a bridge collapses under the train they were riding. Bliss’s compositions include “Almost Persuaded”; the music to “It Is Well with My Soul”; and one hymn discovered in his trunk, which was on a different train that night: “I Will Sing of My Redeemer.”
December 29, 1891 – Thomas Edison patents “transmission of signals electrically” (radio).
December 29, 2018 – Global warming? Record lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth: -111 °Celsius (-231.8 ° Fahrenheit) is registered by American satellite Noaa-20 in the western Pacific at top of large storm.
December 30, 1803 – The Stars and Stripes flag was raised over New Orleans as the United States took formal possession of the territory of Louisiana, an area of 885,000 square miles, nearly doubling the size of the U.S. The territory had been purchased from France for approximately $15 million.
December 30, 1823 – Charles G. Finney, one of the most effective evangelists America had ever seen, is licensed to preach. Though it is hard to gather accurate statistics, he is often directly, or indirectly credited with the conversions of around 500,000 people.
December 30, 1852 – Future U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes marries “Lemonade “Lucy,” so called because, as first lady, she forbade alcohol in the Executive Mansion. The Hayeses were both devout Methodists who began each day with prayer and organized Sunday evening worship services at the White House.
December 30, 1865 – Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India. He was a British poet, novelist, short story writer, best known for adventures such as the Jungle Book.
December 30, 1884 – Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was born in Tokyo. He led Japan during World War II and was arrested in August 1945 as a war criminal, tried, then hanged in 1948.
December 30, 1922 – The communist USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was established through the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation.
December 30, 1953 – The first ever color television sets go on sale for $1,175 each from RCA.
December 30, 1977 – Legendary sports broadcaster Halsey Hall dies at age 79. Known for his cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking style, Hall was a broadcaster of Minnesota Twins games for many years and the first to use the phrase “holy cow” during a broadcast.
December 31st – New Year’s Eve, the final evening of the Gregorian calendar year, traditionally a night for merry-making to welcome the new year.
December 31, 1384 – John Wycliffe, pre-Reformer who initiated the first complete translation of the Bible into English and influenced Hus, Luther, and Calvin, dies at 64. He was condemned at the council of Constance (1415), and his body was disinterred and burned.
December 31, 1781 – The first bank in the U.S., the Bank of North America, received its charter from the Confederation Congress. It opened on January 7, 1782, in Philadelphia.
December 31, 1879 – Thomas Edison provided the first public demonstration of his electric incandescent lamp at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
December 31, 1880 – George C. Marshall was born in Uniontown, PA. He had genius for organization and served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army throughout World War II, expanding the Army from 130,000 to 8,300,000 men. He then served as Secretary of State under President Truman and designed the Marshall Plan for the relief of war torn Europe and to halt the spread of socialism and communism.
January 1, 1 – Origin of the Christian Era.
January 1, 1735 – American Patriot Paul Revere was born in Boston, MA. Best known for his ride on the night of April 18, 1775, warning Americans of British plans to raid Lexington and Concord.
January 1, 1752 – Betsy Ross was born in Philadelphia, PA. She was the seamstress credited with helping to originate and sew the Stars and Stripes flag of America in 1776.
January 1, 1776 – During the American Revolution, George Washington unveiled the Grand Union Flag, the first national flag in America.
January 1, 1802 – In a letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson uses the famous metaphor, “a wall of separation between Church and State.” Not appearing or implied anywhere in the Constitution, Jefferson used it to reassure the Baptists that the First Amendment protected religion from government intrusion—not government from religion. But that phrase has been used unconstitutionally since the 1940s to suppress Christian expression in government.
January 1, 1863 – The Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln freed American slaves.
January 1, 1880 – Construction of the Panama Canal begins.
January 1, 1892 – Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened. Over 20 million new arrivals to America were processed until its closing in 1954.
January 1, 1959 – From one dictator to the next. Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba after leading a revolution that drove out dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro then established his own socialist-communist dictatorship.
January 1, 1959 – The U.S. Navy SEALs established.
January 1, 1969 – The Coast Guard closes Split Rock Lighthouse after fifty-nine years of service. Its grounds become a state park the following year.
January 2, 1917 – About 1,000 northern Minnesota lumbermen walk away from their jobs on the second day of a strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World. The workers, employed by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the International Lumber Company, demand a pay increase, a nine-hour day, and sanitary living conditions.
January 2, 2018 – U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) resigned in disgrace after more than half a dozen women accused him of groping them. The condemning photos released by two of the women, Tina Dupuy and Leeann Tweeden, confirmed it.