Dec. 15 history: Bill of Rights

Dec. 15 in history

In 1791, the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, went into effect following ratification by Virginia. 

In 1890, Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, South Dakota, during a confrontation with Indian police.

In 1939, the Civil War motion picture epic “Gone with the Wind,” starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, had its world premiere in Atlanta.

In 1944, a single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappeared over the English Channel while enroute to Paris.

In 1961, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” is condemned to death by an Israeli war crimes tribunal.

In 1973, at a time when society often still views gay people as deviants, the American Psychiatric Association reverses a century-old decision, issuing a resolution stating that homosexuality it neither a mental illness nor a sickness. To underline the point, the association removes homosexuality from its influential reference tool, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year’s Day and sever official relations with Taiwan. 

In 2000, the long-troubled Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was closed for good.

In 2001, with a crash and a large dust cloud, a 50-foot section of steel - the last standing piece of the World Trade Center’s facade - was brought down in New York.

In 2011, the flag used by U.S. forces in Iraq was lowered in a low-key Baghdad airport ceremony marking the end of a war that had left 4,500 Americans and 110,000 Iraqis dead and cost more than $800 billion. 

In 2013, Nelson Mandela was laid to rest in his childhood hometown, ending a 10-day mourning period for South Africa’s first Black president.

In 2016, a federal jury in Charleston, South Carolina, convicted Dylann Roof of slaughtering nine Black church members who had welcomed him to their Bible study.

In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the first kit that consumers could buy without a prescription to test themselves for COVID-19 entirely at home. 

In 2021, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating George Floyd’s civil rights, admitting for the first time that he held his knee across Floyd’s neck and kept it there even after Floyd became unresponsive, resulting in the Black man’s death. (History.com 12/15/23)