History Today: Clergymen started paying tax, US surrender to Japan

• 619 Boniface V begins his reign as Catholic Pope
• 962 Byzantine-Arab Wars: Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops stormed city of Aleppo, recovering the tattered tunic of John the Baptist
• 1482 The Peace of Atrecht (now Arras) concluded between Louis XI of France and Maximilian of Austria, ending the War of the Burgundian Succession
• 1493 Georg Alt's German translation of Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle is published.
• 1620 French huguenots declare war on King Louis XIII
• 1672 Giovanni Cassini discovers Rhea, a satellite of Saturn
• 1688 King James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch flees to France from William of Orange
• 1690 English astronomer John Flamsteed observes Uranus without realizing it's undiscovered
• 1692 Nahum Tate is appointed the third Poet Laureate by English monarchs William and Mary
• 1715 Russian/Prussian troops occupy Stralsund
• 1724 Emperor Charles VI names Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria land guardian of the Austrian Netherlands
• 1728 Prussian Emperor Karel VI signs Treaty of Berlin
• 1751 France sets plan to tax clergymen
• 1776 Continental Congress negotiates a war loan of $181,500 from France
• 1823 "Visit from St Nicholas" by C Moore published in Troy (NY) Sentinel
• 1832 Dutch troops in Antwerp surrender
• 1834 Joseph Hansom of London receives patent for Hansom cabs
• 1852 1st Chinese theater in US, Celestial John, opens in San Francisco
• 1907 1st all-steel passengar railroad coach completed, Altoona, Pa
• 1909 Albert I becomes the third King of the Belgians
• 1911 Frank Wedekind's "Oaha, die Satire der Satire" premieres in Munich
• 1911 Opera "I Gioielli Della Madonna" is produced (Berlin)
• 1912 1st "Keystone Kops" film, entitled "Hoffmeyer's Legacy"
• 1912 Aswan Dam in Nile begins operation
• 1912 In Delhi, India, terrorist agitation continues as British Viceroy Lord Hardinge is wounded by a bomb explosion
• 1914 World War I: Australian and New Zealand troops arrive in Cairo, Egypt.
• 1915 J Kern/S Greene's musical "Very Good Eddie" premieres in NYC
• 1916 World War I: Battle of Magdhaba - Allied forces defeat Turkish forces in Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
• 1917 3 British warships come close to Holland
• 1919 1st hospital ship built to move wounded naval personnel launched
• 1919 Alice H Parker patents gas heating furnace
• 1920 Government of Ireland Act / Home Rule Act passed partitioning Ireland
• 1921 Visva-Bharati University is inaugurated
• 1933 Marinus van der Lubbe sentenced to death
• 1933 Train crash in Eastern Paris; 230 die
• 1936 Colombia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty
• 1937 First flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber.
• 1938 Discovery of the first modern coelacanth in South Africa.
• 1939 Finnish counter offensive at Summa
• 1939 South Australia score 7-821 against Queensland
• 1940 John Van Druten's "Old Acquaintance" premieres in NYC
• 1941 American forces on Wake Island surrender to Japanese
• 1941 British troops overrun Benghazi, Libya
• 1941 Japan begins assault on Rangoon, Burma
• 1942 Allies air attack on Den Helder
• 1943 1st telecast of a complete opera (Hansel & Gretel), Schenectady, NY
• 1944 Beginning of harsh winter
• 1945 Frederick Astons "Cinderella" premieres in London
• 1945 Pope Pius XII encyclical Orientals omnes, about Rutheense church
• 1946 Belgian Council of State forms
• 1946 Highest ridership in NYC subway history (8.8 million passengers)
• 1946 U of Tenn refuses to play Duquesne U, because they may use a black player in their basketball game
• 1947 Transistor invented by Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley in Bell Labs
• 1951 Last Belgian communities get electricity
• 1951 1st coast-to-coast televised football game (Dumont paid $75,000) LA Rams beat Cleveland Browns 24-17 in NFL championship game
• 1952 Alain Bombard arrives in Barbados after 65 days at sea proving his theory that a shipwrecked person could survive with almost no provisions, despite having lost 25 kg (65 lbs)in weight
• 1953 Dodgers 2nd baseman Jim "Junior" Gilliam wins NL Rookie of Year
• 1954 The first human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts
• 1957 Test Cricket debut for Wally Grout & Bobby Simpson v South Africa
• 1958 "Party with Comden & Green" opens at John Golden NYC for 38 performances
• 1958 Abdallah Ibrahim forms government of Morocco
• 1960 De Quay's Dutch government falls
• 1960 King Saud of Saudi Arabia takes power
• 1961 KICU TV channel 43 in Visalia-Fresno, CA (IND) begins broadcasting
• 1961 Train accident in Italy, 70 die
• 1962 Cuba starts returning US prisoners from Bay of Pigs invasion
• 1962 Dallas Texans beat Houston Oilers 20-17 in AFL championship game
• 1963 Beach Boys 1st appearance on "Shindig"
• 1963 Fire on Greek ship Laconia, 128 die
• 1964 India & Ceylon hit by cyclone, about 4,850 killed
• 1966 Britain's rock TV show "Ready Steady Go" last program
• 1967 Brussels: NATO Council accept "Flexible Response" strategy
• 1968 1st US case of space motion sickness
• 1968 82 members of US intelligence ship Pueblo released by North Korea
• 1968 Borman, Lovell & Anders become 1st men to orbit Moon
• 1970 French author Régis Debray freed in Bolivia
• 1970 NY World Trade Center reaches highest point (411 m)
• 1970 USSR performs nuclear test
• 1970 A Protestant man is shot dead at his home in Belfast, North Ireland
• 1971 British Prime Minister Edward Heath visits Northern Ireland and expresses his determination to end the violence
• 1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued after 70d, survived by cannabalism
• 1972 6.25 Earthquake destroys central Managua Nicaragua, 10,000 die
• 1972 Chandrasekhar takes 8-79 India v England at Delhi
• 1972 Islanders end 15 games winless streak
• 1972 "Immaculate Reception" Steelers turns around a 7-6 defeat with a last second touchdown reception against Raiders to win 13-7
• 1972 2nd Fiesta Bowl: #15 Arizona State beats Missouri, 49-35
• 1973 6 Persian Gulf nations double their oil prices
• 1973 French Caravelle airliner crashes in Morocco, 106 killed
• 1974 "Good News" opens at St James Theater NYC for 16 performances
• 1974 Leningrad: premier of Dmitri Sjotakovitsj' Michelangelo-liederen
• 1975 Congress passes Metric Conversion Act
• 1975 Peter Seitz makes Andy Messersmith & Dave McNally free agents
• 1978 Islanders scored 7 goals in 1 period against NY Rangers, Trottier scores 8 points vs Rangers, 5 goals-NHL record 6 pts in 1 period
• 1979 NY Islanders greatest shutout lose (8-0) vs Chicago Black Hawks
• 1979 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
• 1980 Sam Shepard's "True West" premieres in NYC
• 1981 Geoffrey Boycott becomes leading run-scorer in Test Cricket with 8033
• 1982 The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces it has identified dangerous levels of dioxin in the soil of Times Beach, Missouri.
• 1983 Journal Science publishes 1st report on nuclear winter
• 1984 Viv Richards scores 208 in Test Cricket at MCG
• 1986 Experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan & Jeana Yeager, complete 1st nonstop, round-the-world flight without refueling lands
• 1990 "Lettice & Lovage" closes at Barrymore Theater NYC after 284 performances
• 1990 Slovenians vote to secede from Yugoslavia
• 1991 NY Daily News publisher Kevin Maxwell resigns
• 1994 Baseball owners impose salary cap, fiercely opposed by players
• 1997 Terry Nichols found guilty of manslaughter in Oklahoma bombing
• 1997 US Agriculture Dept estimates it costs $149,820 to raise a child to 18
• 2000 Cricket Women's World Cup: New Zealand defeats Australia by 4 runs
• 2002 A MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25, making it the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat.
• 2003 PetroChina Chuandongbei natural gas field explosion, Guoqiao, Kai, Chongqing, China, killing at least 234.
• 2004 Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean is hit by an 8.1 magnitude earthquake.
• 2005 Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 217 from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Aktau, Kazakhstan crashes shortly after takeoff killing 23 people.
• 2005 Chad declares a state of war against Sudan following a December 18 attack on Adré, which left about 100 people dead.
• 2012 200 civilians are killed by Syrian government warplanes in Helfaya, Syria
• 2012 The Seleka rebel coalition takes over Bambari, the third largest town in the Central African Republic