On this day in 161, Emperor Antoninus Pius dies and is succeeded by his adoptive sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
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On this day in 1774, British forces close the port of Boston to all commerce. The resulting baked bean shortage leads to a marked increase in the air quality of neighboring colonies.
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On this day in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.
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On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone.
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On this day in 1900, the German liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse becomes the first ship to send wireless signals to shore.
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On this day in 1912, Roald Amundsen announces that his expedition had reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
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On this day in 1965, a group of 600 civil rights marchers are forcefully broken up in Selma, Alabama.
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On this day in 1985, the song "We Are the World" receives its international release.
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On this day in 1988, one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott wins the 58th James E Sullivan Award, which is given annually to the best one-handed player in Major League Baseball.
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On this day in 1989, Iran drops diplomatic relations with Britain over Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses. Britain doesn't much care, seeing as their "relations" with Iran hadn't been very "diplomatic" for decades by then.
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On this day in 1993, Diff'rent Strokes actor Todd Bridges is arrested for stabbing a tenant in the building where he worked as a superintendent. A cyclical process of recovery/relapse ensues, and Entertainment Tonight is there to squeeze every last iota of material from it.
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On this day in 1994, African National Congress chief Nelson Mandela rejects demand by white right-wingers that he establish a separate homeland for them in South Africa. Meanwhile, in Liberia, Charles Taylor resigns as President of of the African nation established by American whites for African blacks who wanted to return to the Motherland after being freed from slavery. There's a joke in there somewhere, but yer old pal Jerky doesn't trust himself to tease it out without getting himself in trouble.
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On this day in 1999, death claims the mighty Kubrick.
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