Today is Monday, December 7, the 341st day of 2009. There are 24 days left in the year.
0185 _ Emperor Lo-Yang, China sees supernova (MSH15-52)
1741 _ Elisabeth Petrovna becomes tsarina of Russia
1783 _ William Pitt Jr. (24) becomes British premier
1842 _ New York Philharmonic's first concert
1877 _ Thomas A. Edison demonstrates the gramophone
1941 _ Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (a date that will live in infamy)
1949 _ Chiang Kai-shek flees to Taiwan
1987 _ Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in the U.S. for a summit meeting
1988 _ Yasser Arafat recognizes existence of Israel
1988 _ Earthquake in Armenia _ 6.9 on the Richter scale (100,000 killed, 5,000,000 homeless)