This Day in History: Dec. 13

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Also on this day: Union forces led by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside launch futile attacks against entrenched Confederate soldiers during the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg; Northern troops, soundly defeated, would withdraw two days later. President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first U.S. chief executive to visit Europe while in office. George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” premieres at Carnegie Hall in New York. An Air Indiana Flight 216, a DC-3 carrying the University of Evansville basketball team on a flight to Nashville, crashes shortly after takeoff, killing all 29 people on board. The Philadelphia Mint begin stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which would go into circulation the following July. Authorities in Poland impose martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. (Martial law formally would end in 1983.) The U.N. Security Council chooses Kofi Annan of Ghana to become the world body’s seventh secretary-general.George W. Bush claims the presidency a day after the U.S. Supreme Court shuts down further recounts of disputed ballots in Florida; Al Gore concedes and calls for national unity. Cardinal Bernard Law resigns as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal. Congressional Republicans reach an agreement on a major overhaul of the nation’s tax laws that would provide generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans; middle- and low-income families would get smaller tax cuts.Video
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