December 15 ...

In 1791 the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, went into effect following ratification by the state of Virginia. In 1815 Jane Austen's Emma was published. In 1854 the first street cleaning machine was put into use in Philadelphia. In 1877 Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. In 1890 American Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, SD, during an incident with Indian police. In 1916 the French defeated the Germans in the WWI Battle of Verdun. Over 700,000 German and Allied soldiers were killed in the battle. In 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt presided over the ground-breaking ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. In 1939 the movie Gone With the Wind, based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, premiered at Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta. In 1944 a single-engine plane carrying US Army Major and famed bandleader Glenn Miller disappeared in thick fog over the English Channel while en route to Paris. In 1961 former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death in Jerusalem by an Israeli court; he had been tried on charges for organizing the deportation of Jews to concentration camps; also on this day, the UN General Assembly voted against a Soviet proposal to admit Communist China as a member. In 1965 two US manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, maneuvered within 10 feet of each other while in orbit around the Earth. In 1966 Walter Elias "Walt" Disney died in Los Angeles at the age of 65. In 1970 the Soviet probe Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to land softly on the surface of Venus; the probe only survived the extreme heat and pressure for about 23 minutes and transmitted the first date received on Earth from the surface of another planet. In 1978 US President Carter announced he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year's Day and sever official relations with Taiwan. In 1989 an uprising in Romania began as demonstrators gathered to prevent the arrest of the Reverend Laszlo Tokes, a dissident clergyman. In 1992 El Salvador's government and leftist guerrilla leaders formally declared the end of the country's 12-year civil war. In 1996 Boeing Co. announced plans to pay $13.3 billion to acquire rival aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas Corp. In 2000 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was closed for good.