First U.S. helicopters arrive in South Vietnam

With war raging in Europe, conflict also reigns in the Far East between two traditional enemies, Japan and an internally divided China. On December 11, 1915, the first president of the new Chinese republic, Yuan Shih-kai, who had come to power in the wake of revolution in 1911 and the fall of the Manchu Dynasty […]

Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict. The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan that Germany would join a war against the United States, he was uncertain as to how the […]

On December 11, kidnappers release Frank Sinatra, Jr., after abducting him in Lake Tahoe, California, three days earlier. The 19-year-old man, who was trying to follow in his father’s footsteps by pursuing a singing career, had been blindfolded and taken at gunpoint from his hotel room at Harrah’s Club Lodge and taken to Canoga Park, […]

The secretary of the Moscow writer’s union declares that nudity as displayed in the popular play Oh! Calcutta! is a sign of decadence in Western culture. More disturbing, he claimed, was the fact that this “bourgeois” thinking was infecting Russian youth. Sergei Mikhailkov, best known for writing books for children in Russia, lashed out at […]

On December 11, 1978 half a dozen masked robbers raided the Lufthansa Airlines cargo building at JFK Airport in New York, making off with more than $5 million in cash ($21 million in today’s dollars) and almost $1 million in jewelry. To this day, the Lufthansa heist, as it is known, is considered one of […]

On December 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, the United Nations adopts a new treaty for the purpose of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was a revolutionary attempt to forestall climate change, an admirable effort that yielded mixed results. In the ’80s and ’90s, the […]

On December 11, 2019, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg is named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. The Swedish climate activist became the first Person of the Year to be born in the 21st century and the youngest ever to receive the honor. Thunberg took to activism early, convincing her parents to become vegans, reduce their carbon footprint […]