On December 10, 1861, the Confederate States of America admits Kentucky as the 13th state of the Confederacy...except its not really the State of Kentucky. Confederate sympathizers within the Commonwealth formed a shadow government, the Confederate Government of Kentucky, which the CSA admitted despite its not having the support of the legitimate state government or the majority of its citizens. The shadow government functioned in exile throughout the war, aligning itself with the Army of Tennessee. There is no record of its formally having dissolved. (seal of the provisional government)


On December 10, 1941, Japanese naval aircraft sink the HMS Prince of Wales (left) and HMS Repulse off the coast of Malaysia. Although the Japanese sank multiple US battleships in Pearl Harbor three days before, the Prince of Wales and Repulse attacks represent the first time capital ships are sunk by aircraft on the high seas.


On December 10, 1967, popular singer/songwriter Otis Redding is killed in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin. He was 26 years old. Redding and his support band, the Bar-Kays, were traveling to Madison in Redding's plane in bad weather for a show when the plane crashed into Lake Monona during its landing approach. The cause of the crash was never determined. Redding, the pilot, an assistant and four of the five band members were killed. Redding is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame, and was voted one of the Top 100 artists of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. His biggest hit, "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", was recorded shortly before his death, was his only number one chart single and the first song to ever hit number one on the U.S. charts posthumously. It also earned Redding 2 posthumous Grammy Awards.

Repulse, yes. Prince of Wales was a modern ship, completed the year before. It sailed along with the Hood to hunt for Bismarck in 1940, so new it still had shipyard workers aboard.

On December 11, 1972, lunar lander Challenger, Apollo 17, sets down in the Taurus-Littrow Valley of the moon. It is the last manned moon landing; 3 additional landings having been cancelled due to budget cuts. Mission commander Eugene Cernan and geologist Harrison Schmidt, the first and only pure scientist to walk on the moon, would spend a record 22 hours walking the lunar surface over the course of 3 EVA's. During the return flight home, command module America pilot Ronald Evans would perform a 65 minute spacewalk at an altitude of 160,000 miles to retrieve film casettes from the service module. The mission also carried 5 mice with implanted radiation detectors to monitor the effects of cosmic rays. A rock taken from the lunar surface during the final EVA was dubbed the Friendship Rock. On the astronauts' return to Houston, the Friendship Rock was broken into 71 pieces, and given to schoolchildren from 70 nations to bring back to their home countries. The last piece is now in the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute (below) and may be touched by the public.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...trolling.ogv/Ap17_strolling.ogv.240p.vp9.webm

On December 12, 1862, the Union ironclad gunboat USS Cairo is clearing mines on the Yazoo River near Vicksburg, MS when one of the mines is detonated by volunteers hidden onshore. The Cairo sinks in 12 minutes, the first ship ever sunk by a remotely detonated explosive. Her entire crew of about 250 officers and sailors survives. The remains of the ship were raised in 1964 and after a 15 year-long restoration effort, put on display at the Vicksburg National Military Park.


On December 12, 1939 at the village of Tolvajärvi, a regiment of the Finnish army defeats a vastly superior force of Soviet troops for Finland's only decisive victory of the Winter War, begun with a Soviet invasion 13 days earlier. Although outnumbered 5 to 1 and with inferior armored support, the Finns were vastly better prepared to fight in winter conditions and were quite creative in their use of makeshift weaponry, most notably the Molotov cocktail, a gasoline filled glass bottle with a rag stuck in its neck for a wick and named for Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. The Battle of Tolvajärvi cost the Soviets nearly 5,000 killed and an equal number wounded, while the Finns' casualties were fewer than 400. The loss was only a temporary setback for the Soviets, who forced the Finns to surrender in March. Nevertheless, the difficulties the Soviets had defeating the smaller nation were among the reasons Hitler eventually decided he could invade and defeat the USSR (Finnish troops in winter combat dress, including skis).


On December 12, 1917, Edward J. Flanagan, a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Omaha, Nebraska, founds an orphanage called The City of Little Men. Father Flanagan used a $90 loan to rent a house in the city and house 5 orphan boys there. The City of Little Men quickly outgrew its home, and in 1921 Flanagan purchased a farm on the outskirts of the city, renaming his project Boys Town. With a focus on education and social development, Boys Town would become one of America's premier models for care of disadvantaged youths. Boys Town now has nine locations across the country, including New Orleans, and nearly 30,000 boys and girls have graduated from its programs.

On December 13, 1577, Sir Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth, England, in command of a 5-ship fleet. He will not see England again until Sept. 26, 1580, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. Only Drake's flagship, the Golden Hind, completes the voyage, with 59 men of the original 164 sailors of the expedition. Although Ferdinand Magellan gets credit as first to circle the world, Magellan himself was killed about 3/4 of the way through the voyage, and the expedition completed without him; Drake is the first round-the-world expedition commander to personally complete the mission.


On December 13, 1636, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes the various local militias of the colony into 3 (North, South and East) Colonial regiments. Thus organized, there is more direct accountability to the colonial government and increase response time to incursions by the Pequot Indian tribes scattered throughout the region. This organization of militias is considered the birth of the U.S. National Guard; several existing regiments of the Massachusetts Army National Guard trace their origins directly back to these 3 17th century units. (First muster of the East Regiment, Massachusetts Bay Colony Militia)


On December 13, 1977, an Air Indiana DC-3 transporting the University of Evansville basketball team to a game in Tennessee crashes on takeoff, killing all 29 people aboard. The crash is blamed on the pilot's failure to remove gust locks from the ailerons and rudder during pre-flight. Ironically, the only Evansville basketball player not on board the plane (due to an injury) was killed in a car crash two weeks later. Evansville was one of the premier small college basketball programs in the nation over the previous 20 years, having won 5 Division II National Championships since 1959. 1977 was the school's first year competing in Division I. Strong community support helped the Purple Aces team return to competition the following season. (The "Weeping Basketball" memorial to the 1977-78 team on the University of Evansville campus)

On December 14, 1814, British naval forces and Marines defeat a U.S. defense force at Lake Borgne in southeast Louisiana. Having failed to capture Mobile several weeks earlier, Admiral Alexander Cochrane set his sights on New Orleans. He found a force of 8 small but well armed American vessels guarding Lake Borgne, a shorter passage to the city (connecting with Lake Pontchartrain) than the river. Unable to get his fleet into the shallow lake, Cochrane armed about 40 longboats with one cannon each and sent in a force of nearly a thousand sailors and marines. In a two hour skirmish that included moments of hand to hand fighting as the British attempted to board, the invaders eventually captured six of the 8 defending vessels, although the encounter cost Cochrane nearly as many casualties as he inflicted. News of the defeat panicked New Orleans residents, leading garrison commander Andrew Jackson to declare martial law.


On December 14, 1542, the death of King James V of Scotland leaves the throne to his only child, Mary Stuart. She is six days old. Mary was spirited to France and the nation ruled by regents until she was old enough to assume the throne at age 19. By then she was already widowed once, having married Frances, Dauphin of France. She married again, this time her half-cousin Henry, who was murdered in 1567. Four months later, Mary married the man acquitted of Henry's murder, but she was soon forced to abdicate and left the throne to her one-year old son James VI. Fleeing to England to seek the protection of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, Mary soon came under suspicion of conspiring to overthrow Elizabeth. She was held in protective custody for nearly 19 years before finally being convicted and executed. Mary, Queen of Scots, remains one of the more controversial figures in the history of the British Empire.


On December 14, 1907, the first documented marine oil spill in history takes place, when the American schooner Thomas W. Lawson founders in a storm off Cornwall, England. The Lawson is the largest vessel ever constructed without engines, 475 feet long and with 7 masts for power, built in 1902 for hauling coal and oil on the American east coast. She sailed for London from Philadelphia (her first Atlantic crossing) on November 19 with a cargo of 58,000 barrels of paraffin oil. Hammered by weather for the next 20 days, the Lawson barely made it across the ocean, but broke up - and her cargo lost - when the captain attempted to anchor in the Isles of Sicilly to ride out the remainder of the storm. Seventeen of her compliment of 19 were lost, Dow being one of the only two survivors. The Lawson lies in about 50 feet of water and is a popular attraction for scuba diving in fair sea conditions.

On December 15, 1836, a fire in the Washington DC headquarters of the US Patent Office destroys nearly 10,000 patents, and about 7,000 corresponding patent models. At first thought to be the work of an arsonist seeking to destroy evidence of a postal scandal (the US Post Office was in the same building), the fire was later determined to be accidental. Senator John Ruggles (Maine), chairing the investigating committee, said the fire destroyed 50 years of the history of American invention. About 30% of the lost patents would be restored, and the Patent Office would revamp its system for identifying patents, and move into a modern, fire proof building (below). It was also moved from under the umbrella of the State Department and made its own agency.


On December 15, 1965, two manned spacecraft rendezvous in earth orbit for the first time. Gemini 6A, crewed by Walter "Wally" Schirra and Thomas Stafford, launched from Cape Canaveral just after 1:30pm that day. Three hours later, they made radar contact with Gemini 7, which had been in orbit since December 4 with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell aboard. A number of course correcting engine burns by both crews over the next six hours brought the two spacecraft within a foot of each other, and though neither ship was fitted with docking equipment, they flew in near physical contact for about 20 minutes. Gemini 6A splashed down the following day, Gemini 7 would remain in space another 3 days, having completed 206 orbits of the globe. (Gemini 7 seen from Gemini 6A)


On December 15, 1979, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, friends and Canadian print journalists, sit down for a night of playing Scrabble when they notice their game set was missing several tiles. Instead of playing on, they begin to improvise a question and answer game using inconsequential knowledge - trivia. Over time, two more friends began helping them develop the game further, and in 1981, the group rolled out the finished product, called Trivial Pursuit. Today, Trivial Pursuit is distributed in 17 languages, and with more than 50 variations (themed games focusing on specific branches of trivia or more substantial knowledge). The game was added to the Toys and Games Hall of Fame in 1993.

On December 16, 1978, the city of Cleveland, OH becomes the first major US metropolitan city to default on its debt since the Great Depression. The city's publicly owned utility company, Municipal Light, had been been falling increasingly into debt for some time. Several of the banks carrying Muni Light's debt were also invested in its largest private competitor, Cleveland Electric Illuminated, and tried to force Mayor Dennis Kucinich (below) to sell Muni to CEI. When Kucinich refused, the banks refused to roll over the debt as was customary. The default likely cost Kucinich re-election a year later, though Congress would eventually investigate and cite the banks and CEI for collusion.



On December 16, 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet sets sail from Hampton Roads, VA. Over the next 22 months, the fleet of 16 battleships (suitably liveried with peacetime white hulls and elaborate red, white and blue banner work at the bows) and smaller ships would circumnavigate the globe and make ports of call on every continent except Antarctica. Roosevelt wanted the voyage to be part international good will, part show of American naval strength, but the most significant thing the mission may have done was demonstrate how neglected the American navy had become in the post Civil War years. The first American dreadnought battleship was already under construction when the GWF sailed, but the reports of the ships' poor performance on the high seas spurred Congress to step up efforts to modernize the navy. (the Great White Fleet, led by flagship USS Connecticut, on the high seas)