GMT

Today in History December 19

1909 American socialist women denounce suffrage as a movement of the middle class.

1982 Four bombs explode at South Africa's only nuclear power station in Johannesburg.

1984 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang sign an agreement that committed Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system. Hong Kong was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.

1998 President Bill Clinton is impeached. The House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against President Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton was the second president in American history to be impeached.

2001 The highest barometric pressure ever recorded (1085.6 hPa, 32.06 inHg) occurs at Tosontsengel, Khovsgol, Mongolia.


Born on December 19

1906 Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet General Secretary of the Communist party and President of the Supreme Soviet from 1964 until 1982.

1943 US Marine Corps four-star general James L. Jones Jr.; Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (2003–2006); Commandant of the Marine Corps (1999–2003); National Security Advisor (2009–2010).


JOTD

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi want to see who’s best at his job. So they each go into the woods, find a bear, and attempt to convert it. Later they get together. The priest begins: “When I found the bear, I read to him from the Catechism and sprinkled him with holy water. Next week is his First Communion.”
“I found a bear by the stream,” says the minister, “and preached God’s holy word. The bear was so mesmerized that he let me baptize him.”
They both look down at the rabbi, who is lying on a gurney in a body cast. “Looking back,” he says, “maybe I shouldn’t have started with the circumcision.”