Today is Monday, Dec. 12, the 347th day of 2016. There are 19 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On Dec. 12, 1946, a United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of the U.N.'s headquarters.
On this date:
In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oscar Straus to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor; Straus became the first Jewish Cabinet member.
In 1915, singer-actor Frank Sinatra was born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, New Jersey.
In 1917, Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Nebraska.
In 1925, the first motel - the Motel Inn - opened in San Luis Obispo, California.
In 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River. (Japan apologized, and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)
In 1947, the United Mine Workers union disaffiliated from the American Federation of Labor.
In 1963, Kenya became independent of Britain.
In 1975, Sara Jane Moore asked a federal court in San Francisco to allow her to plead guilty to trying to kill President Gerald R. Ford. (After the judge ruled Moore competent to change her plea, she was sentenced to life. Moore was released on parole on New Year's Eve 2007 after serving 32 years behind bars.)
In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
In 2000, George W. Bush became president-elect as a divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election.
