It’s a Wonderful Life, a 1946 Christmasfantasydrama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart, premiered in New York on this day. The film is one of the most beloved in American cinema, and has become traditional viewing during the Christmas season. It is now considered one of the greatest films of all time. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and had been\ rated as one of the 100 best American films ever made by the American Film Institute.
Frank Russell Capra James "Jimmy" MaitlandStewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) (May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991)
On this day in 1978, Cult leader Jim Jones and hundreds of his followers died in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana in South America. It was the largest mass suicide in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until September 11, 2001.
REV. JIM JONES
Shown are bodies of members of the Peoples Temple who died after their leader Jim Jones ordered them to drink Flav-R-Aid laced with cyanide.
Congressman Leo Ryan (above) was among five killed by Temple members at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip (below).
The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered in New York on this day in 1928. It was Walt Disney’s "Steamboat Willie," starring Mickey Mouse.
During World War II on this day in 1945, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a conference at Yalta to outline plans for Germany’s defeat.
On this day in 1997, a civil jury in California found O.J. Simpson liable in the death of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Goldman’s parents were awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages.
Ron Goldman’s father Fred, sister Kim, and stepmother Patty are pictured during OJ’s trial.
Patricia (Patty) Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, CA, by the Symbionese Liberation Army on this day in 1974.
Patty Hearst (right) and Donald DeFreeze rob a San Francisco bank on April 15, 1974.
On December 11, 2003, the Massachusetts Senate put forward legislative language creating civil unions for same-sex couples to the SJC, asking if it satisfied the court’s requirements. On February 4, 2004, the court replied that it was unacceptable to allow different-sex couples marriages but same- sex couples only civil unions, that the distinction between marriage and civil unions constituted unconstitutional discrimination, even if the rights and obligations attached to each were identical. It called the difference between the terms marriage and civil union "a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status."
On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage.
A 7.4 earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras on this day in 1976 killed more than 22,000 people.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh(February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974)
The Congressional Gold Medal presented August 15, 1930, to Charles Lindbergh by President Herbert Hoover.
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