First basketball game played

Determined to challenge the growing American military presence in their territory, Native Americans in northern Wyoming lure Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman and his soldiers into a deadly ambush on December 21, 1866. With 81 fatalities, the Fetterman Massacre was the army’s worst defeat in the West until the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Tensions […]

On December 21, 1954, Dr. Sam Sheppard is convicted for beating his wife, Marilyn, to death inside their suburban home in Cleveland, Ohio five months earlier. Sheppard claimed to have fallen asleep in the family’s living room and awakened to find a man with bushy hair fleeing the scene. The authorities, who uncovered the fact […]

The film The Graduate opens at two theaters in New York: the Coronet on Third Avenue and the Lincoln Art Theater on Broadway. The film, based on a 1963 novel by Charles Webb, had a simple premise: As its screenwriter explained it, “this kid graduates college, has an affair with his parents’ best friend and then falls […]

On December 21, 1970, rock star Elvis Presley is greeted at the White House by President Richard M. Nixon. Presley’s visit was not just a social call: He wanted to meet Nixon in order to offer his services in the government’s war on drugs. Three weeks earlier, Presley, who wanted to distance himself from rock-and-roll’s […]

Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York is bombed midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard, as well as 11 people on the ground.

On December 21, 2012, the music video for “Gangnam Style,” a song by the Korean rapper Psy, becomes the first YouTube video to garner one billion views. The video’s global popularity is a case study in the power and unpredictability of viral internet content. Psy had been well-known in Korea for a decade, earning awards […]