On This Day December 7

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1941 – Japanese forces launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, thrusting the U.S. into World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt calls it “a date which will live in infamy.”

1963 – Decades before the DVR and years before the first Super Bowl, instant replay is used for the first time during an Army-Navy college football game. As the CBS broadcast replays Rollie Stichweh’s winning touchdown, commentator Lindsey Nelson tells viewers, “Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!”

1972 – Apollo 17 hurtles toward space, carrying a three-man crew to the last moon landing of the Apollo program.

1982 – The nation’s first execution by lethal injection takes place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Charles Brooks, Jr. was convicted of kidnapping and murdering an auto mechanic.

1993 – Colin Ferguson opens fire on a Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) commuter train after it pulls out of New York’s Penn Station, killing six and injuring 19. Other passengers overpower Ferguson when he stops to reload his pistol. The incident comes to be known as the Long Island Rail Road Massacre.

2001 – The heist film “Ocean’s Eleven,” starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia and Julia Roberts, and directed by Steven Soderbergh, opens in theaters. It is a remake of the 1960 movie of the same name that starred “Rat Pack” members Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., along with Angie Dickinson.

On This Day September 11

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1961 –  Packing winds of 175 miles per hour, Hurricane Carla barrels into Texas. It kills 46 people and injures more than 450 others, with many lives spared due to the evacuation of nearly half a million people from the Texas coast. Carla is the first storm to garner live television coverage, featuring a young reporter named Dan Rather, who went on to become an acclaimed CBS News journalist.

1970 – Secret agent Maxwell Smart calls Agent 99 for the last time as the final episode of “Get Smart” airs on CBS. 

1971 – One of the most colorful figures of the Cold War dies: former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who went head-to-head with President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

1974 – The St. Louis Cardinals take seven hours, four minutes and 25 innings to beat the New York Mets at Shea Stadium. The contest sets a National League record for innings played in a night game. Fans finally go home after 3 a.m. 

1985 – Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the all-time hit leader with his 4,192nd hit to break Ty Cobb’s record. Rose lined a 2-1 pitch off San Diego pitcher Eric Show to left-center field for a single in the first inning. It was the 57th anniversary of Ty Cobb’s last game in the majors.

2001 – Four coordinated attacks using commercial airliners are launched against the U.S. by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, leaving thousands dead or injured. New York City’s iconic World Trade Center is destroyed, part of The Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. is damaged, and heroic passengers aboard another jet wrest control from the terrorists and crash it into a rural Pennsylvania field to prevent it from striking a major city. 

2003 – Actor John Ritter dies just six days shy of his 55th birthday. Cause of death was an undetected aortic dissection, when the body’s main artery, the aorta, tears. Ritter was best known for playing Jack Tripper on the ABC sitcom Three’s Company (1977–1984), receiving a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for the role in 1984.