History Today

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 22nd. It was an exciting day for animal lovers around the world: on this day in 1956, the Columbus Zoo in Ohio welcomed Colo, the first-ever gorilla born in captivity. Colo was a western lowland gorilla who weighed just about 4 pounds at birth.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 21st. YouTube is the world’s second most popular website, after Google, with more than 2 billion users each month. Most of the site’s most popular videos are music videos, just like the one that became the first video to hit 1 billion views on this day in 2012--Gangnam Style by the Korean rapper Psy. The video’s success made Psy a global sensation.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 20th. Just last month, a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair sold for some four thousand pounds at auction in the UK. Decades after his death, Elvis still has a remarkable fan base, and most people have heard hits like “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Hound Dog.” But they may not know that Elvis was also a U.S. army veteran, who received his draft notice on this day in 1957 during the Korean War.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 19th. Most Americans are familiar with the July 1969 footage of the Apollo lunar landing, when NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. But you might not know that the Apollo program continued for another three years. On this day in 1972, Apollo 17 became the last of America’s six crewed lunar landing missions to land safely back on Earth.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 18th. Thanksgiving has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November since 1941, but it was actually on this day all the way back in 1777 that Americans celebrated the first day of national thanksgiving. That first celebration was held in honor of the American victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 17th. Prior to the pandemic, nearly 3 million people flew in and out of America’s airports each day. That number would likely have astonished Orville and WIlbur Wright, who made their famous first flight on this day in 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. That flight--the first made in a self-propelled, heavier-than-air craft--lasted just 12 seconds and covered about 120 feet.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 16th. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that just because something seems improbable, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The same adage would apply to the tragedy that unfolded on this day in 1960 over the skies of New York City.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 15th. The leaning tower of Pisa is one of Italy’s most famous tourist attractions, but between 1990 and this day in 2001 it was closed to the public, as a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to fortify the tower without eliminating its famous lean.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 14th. It was one of the saddest days in modern American history--on this day in 2012, a shooter killed 20 first graders and six school employees before turning the gun on himself at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Prior to the massacre, the shooter had killed his own mother, who was the owner of the guns used in the deadly rampage.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 13th. On the heels of a tumultuous election, we look back to this day in 2000, when then-Vice President Al Gore conceded the presidential election to Texas governor George W. Bush. Gore had won the national popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, but narrowly lost Florida, giving the Electoral College to Bush, 271 to 266. Gore’s concession followed weeks of legal battles over the recounting of votes in Florida.

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