Today is Monday, Dec. 15, the 348th day of 2025
with 16 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
On this date in history:
In 1791, the Bill of Rights, comprising the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect.
In 1890, Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull was killed in a skirmish with U.S. soldiers along the Grand River in South Dakota.
In 1939, the film version of Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta.
In 1945, U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered an end to state Shintoism in Japan, a key belief of which was that the emperor was a divine being. Because the U.S. government supported freedom of religion, though, it did not place an outright ban on the religion.
In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer regarded as the architect of the World War II Holocaust, was condemned to death by an Israeli war crimes tribunal.
In 1973, John Paul Getty III is found alive at a gas station outside of Naples, Italy, more than four months after he was kidnapped.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association reversed its longstanding position and declared that being gay isn't a mental illness.
In 1990, in a landmark right-to-die case, a Missouri judge cleared the way for the parents of Nancy Cruzan to remove their daughter from life-support systems.
In 1992, Salvadorans celebrated the formal end to their country's 12-year civil war.
In 1993, British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds issued a "framework for lasting peace" in Northern Ireland.
In 1997, 85 people were killed in the crash of a Tajik Airlines charter jetliner in the United Arab Emirates.
In 2001, the leaning Tower of Pisa reopened after a decadelong restoration effort.
In 2011, the United States formally ended its long military mission in Iraq in a solemn ceremony at Baghdad's international airport. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared the war was over. It had begun in 2003.
In 2014, Man Haron Monis took 18 people hostage inside a Lindt Cafe in Sydney, Australia. The standoff, which lasted 16 hours, finally ended when police raided the cafe the next morning. Monis and two hostages died in the ordeal.
In 2017, 16-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi was recorded slapping and kicking an Israeli soldier in the West Bank after forces shot her younger cousin the head for throwing rocks. She was arrested days later and sentenced to eight months in prison.
In 2023, jurors in a federal civil defamation trial ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million in damages to two election workers.
