Tidbits of History, December 16

December 16 is:

National Chocolate Covered Anything Day

The first day of Las Posadas (Mexico, Latin America), a nine-day celebration of Mary and Joseph’s search for a place to stay where Jesus could be born.

Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1653.

Birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770), German composer and pianist.

The Boston Tea Party took place in 1773 as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.

Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate in 1809.

In an act that foreshadowed the Texan rebellion, Benjamin Edwards rode into Mexican-controlled Nacogdoches, Texas in 1826 and proclaimed himself the ruler of the Republic of Fredonia.

“Variety” covering all phases of show business, first published in 1905.

Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen in 1916.

Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempt to escape from the American federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay on this date in 1937; neither was ever seen again.

The Battle of the Bulge during World War II began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium in 1944.

1950 – Korean War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman declared a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight in support of communist North Korea.

President Bill Clinton ordered a sustained series of airstrikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein’s continued defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998.