2008
More than five months after his single-engine airplane went missing in Nevada, American adventurer Steve Fossett was legally declared dead; his body was recovered later in the year.
1989
Under President Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan after occupying the country since 1979.
1978
Leon Spinks defeated Muhammad Ali to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
1965
Canada officially adopted the Maple Leaf Flag following a royal proclamation.
1954
American cartoonist and animator Matt Groening, who created the comic strip Life in Hell and the television series The Simpsons and Futurama, was born.
1933
An assassin’s bullet meant for the U.S. president-elect, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wounded Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago, who died three weeks later.
1927
The silent film It was released in American theatres, and Clara Bow, the star, became Hollywood’s first “It girl.”
1861
English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who was perhaps best known for his work on Principia Mathematica, was born in Ramsgate, Isle of Thanet, Kent, England.
1820
Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer crusader for the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, was born in Adams, Massachusetts.
1764
Auguste Chouteau settled St. Louis at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
