Artist Rob Brun

On December 16, 1944, the Germans launched 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.

American troops man trenches along a snowy hedgerow in
the northern Ardennes Forest during the Battle.  

An American artilleryman shaves in frigid cold, using a
helmet for a shaving bowl.

An American tank moves past another gun carriage which
slid off an icy road in the Ardennes Forest during the
Battle of the Bulge.

Belgian residents of a northern Ardennes hamlet flee the fighting during the
Battle of the Bulge.        
        
       

In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists
disguised as Mohawk Indians board three 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.

The term ‘Tea Party’ was not actually used at the time
and was coined in the 1830s when the Revolutionary
generation looked back with nostalgia fifty years later.

Following ratification by the state of Virginia, the first 10
amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known collectively
as the Bill of Rights, became the law of the land.

   
Alton Glen "Glenn" Miller
(March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944)

After departing from an airfield outside London on December
15, 1944, a single-engine aircraft carrying trombonist and
bandleader Glenn Miller went missing over the English
Channel.

Miller was traveling to France for a congratulatory performance
for American troops that had recently helped to liberate Paris.

The wreckage of Miller’s plane was never found. His official
military status remains Missing in Action.

A U.S. Army Air Forces Noorduyn UC-64A Norseman
from the 3rd Air Commando Group.

 
Published in 1939.

Schindler’s List, starring Liam Neeson in the true story of a
German businessman who saves the lives of more than a
thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust, opens in
theaters.

The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and took
home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best
Director.

It was the first Best Director win for Spielberg, who had been
nominated in the category for three of his earlier films: 1977’s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1981’s Raiders of the
Lost Ark and 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

Oskar Schindler (1908 – 1974)

Liam Neeson (72)

Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson

Steven Allan Spielberg