Today is Friday, December 7, the 341st day of 2007. There are 24 days left in the year.
36 _ B.C. ― Earliest known Mayan inscription, Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo
43 _ B.C. ― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman writer, gets his head and right hand chopped off by Mark Antony's soldiers
185 _ Chinese Emperor Lo-Yang sees supernova
1741 _ Elisabeth Petrovna becomes tsarina of Russia
1842 _ New York Philharmonic's first concert
1877 _ Thomas Edison demonstrates the gramophone
1917 _ The U.S. becomes the 13th country to declare war on Austria during World War I
1926 _ Gas refrigerator patented
1941 _ Japanese attack Pearl Harbor
1941 _ The first Japanese submarine sunk by a U.S. ship
1949 _ Chiang Kai-shek flees to Taiwan
1960 _ Ivory Coast claims independence from France
1965 _ Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that led to split of the 2 churches in 1054
1970 _ West Germany and Poland normalize relations
1975 _ Indonesian army occupies East Timor
1976 _ The U.N. Security Council endorses Kurt Waldheim, secretary-general for the second 5-year term
1981 _ Spain becomes a member of the NATO
1987 _ Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in the U.S. for a summit meeting
1987 _ Palestinian uprising against Israel in West Bank
1988 _ Gorbachev announces 10 percent unilateral Soviet troop reductions at the U.N.
1988 _ Earthquake in Armenia ― 6.9 on the Richter scale 100,000 killed, 5,000,000 homeless