December 7 ...

In 1787 Delaware became the first state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1796 electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the US. In 1836 Martin Van Buren was elected the eighth president of the US. In 1873 novelist Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, VA. In 1941 Japanese forces attacked American and British territories and possessions in the Pacific, including the home base of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In 1972 America's last moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral. In 1985 retired Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart died in Hanover, NH at age 70. In 1987 43 people were killed in the crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines jetliner in California after a gunman apparently opened fire on a fellow passenger and the two pilots. In 1988 a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia; official estimates put the death toll at 25,000. In 1995 under Republican pressure, President Clinton reluctantly presented a seven-year balanced-budget plan that was quickly criticized by GOP lawmakers; also on this day, a 746-pound probe from the Galileo spacecraft hurtled into Jupiter's atmosphere, sending back data to the mothership before it was presumably destroyed. In 2004 Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as President of Afghanistan.