Shimla, Dec. 6 Keekli Bureau
2006
NASA released images—taken by the Mars Global Surveyor—that indicated the relatively recent presence of water on Mars.
1992
The Babri Masjid (“Mosque of Bābur”) in Ayodhya was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists, leading to Hindu-Muslim riots throughout India.
1973
Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president of the United States, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned.
1969
Violence at the Altamont rock festival in Livermore, California, climaxed during the Rolling Stones’ appearance when a concertgoer was fatally stabbed by a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, which had been hired as security.
1933
In what was considered a landmark ruling, a U.S. federal judge held that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not obscene, thus allowing for greater freedoms in literary works.
1917
Finland declared itself independent of Russia, following the Bolshevik Revolution.
1907
An explosion in a coal mine in Monongah, West Virginia, killed more than 350 people, many of them young boys.
1898
Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt—whose images, many of them for Life magazine, established him as one of the first and most important photojournalists—was born in Dirschau, West Prussia (now Tczew, Poland).
1865
Georgia became the 27th U.S. state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.
1534
Sebastián de Belalcázar, under the authority of Francisco Pizarro, occupied the Indian city of Quito in what is now Ecuador.
1421
King Henry VI of England was born in Windsor, Berkshire.
