MIKE GRACIA

December 16, 2009 saw the premiere of the James Cameron 
blockbuster science fiction film Avatar. One of the most
expensive films ever made, it was also one of the most
successful, holding the title of highest-grossing film of all
time for nearly a decade.

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, 
                Michelle Rodriquez, and Sigourney Weaver
              
              

Director James Cameron (69)

On December 16, 1944, the Germans launch the last major
offensive of the war, Operation Autumn Mist, also known
as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an
attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern
France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge,
so-called because the Germans created a “bulge” around
the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the
American defensive line, was the largest fought on the
Western front.

In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised
as Mohawk Indians boarded three British tea ships and dump 342
chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,”
was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill
designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly
lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the
American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company
to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders,
and many colonists viewed the act as another example of
taxation tyranny.