Dec. 12 history: USS Panay

 Dec. 12 history 

In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives. 

In 1901, Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. The message—simply the Morse-code signal for the letter “s”—traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada.

In 1913, authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the “Mona Lisa,” stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.

In 1937, during the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War, the U.S. gunboat Panay is attacked and sunk by Japanese warplanes in Chinese waters. The American vessel, neutral in the Chinese-Japanese conflict, was escorting U.S. evacuees and three Standard Oil barges away from Nanking. The Panay‘s position had been reported to the Japanese as required. The Japanese maintained the attack was unintentional. USS Panay sunk by Japanese | December 12, 1937 | HISTORY [Almost four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.]

In 1970, 'Tears Of A Clown' gives Smokey Robinson & The Miracles their first #1 pop hit.

In 1977, the dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” starring John Travolta, premiered in New York. 

In 1980, American oil tycoon Armand Hammer pays $5,126,000 at auction for a notebook containing writings by the legendary artist Leonardo da Vinci. The manuscript, written around 1508, was one of some 30 similar books da Vinci produced during his lifetime on a variety of subjects. 

In 1995, by three votes, the Senate killed a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning and other forms of desecration against Old Glory.

In 2000, George W. Bush became president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida’s contested election.

In 2010, the inflatable roof of the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed following a snowstorm that had dumped 17 inches on the city. (The NFL was forced to shift an already rescheduled game between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants to Detroit.)

In 2018, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s one-time fixer, was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes that included arranging the payment of hush money to conceal Trump’s alleged sexual affairs.

In 2019, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson led his Conservative Party to a landslide victory in a general election that was dominated by Brexit.

In 2020, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered in Washington for rallies to back his desperate efforts to subvert the election that he lost to Joe Biden.