Tidbits of History, December 4

December 4 is:

National Cookie Day
Cookies were invented during the seventh century in Persia. Right around the time that sugar became a common resource in that region.

Santas’ List Day – “He’s making a list and checking it twice!”

Wear Brown Shoes Day

In 1674, Father Jacques Marquette founded a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek. (The mission would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois.)

Publication of Federalist Paper #16: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union written by Alexander Hamilton in 1787. Hamilton continues to push for a strong central government. In this article Hamilton speaks of states or groups of states resisting general authority and how that would lead to civil war and the disbanding of the Union. He makes a distinction between noncompliance and active resistance to federal mandates. He says the laws set forth by the federal government should not require the intervention of the state legislatures but directly apply to the people.

Peter Gaillard patented the power mower in 1812.

North Carolina ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

William Magear Tweed , the “Boss” of New York City’s Tammany Hall political organization, escaped from jail and fled to Spain from the U.S. in 1875. He was returned to custody in 1876. He died of pneumonia in the Ludlow Street Jail in 1878. Tweed was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen’s committee in 1877 at between $25 million and $45 million from New York City taxpayers through political corruption, although later estimates ranged as high as $200 million.

1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sailed for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.

1945 – By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approved United States participation in the United Nations. (The UN had been established on October 24, 1945.)

1954 – The first Burger King opened in Miami, Florida. At the end of fiscal year 2013, Burger King reported it had over 13,000 outlets in 79 countries; of these, 66 percent are in the United States.

Dianne Feinstein became San Francisco’s first woman mayor when she was named to replace George Moscone, who had been assassinated in 1978.

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