This Day in History - December 8

[USA1]

1854 - Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

1886 - The American Federation of Labor was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio.

1941 - Congress declared war on Japan and the U.S. entered World War II.

1949 - Communist attacks forced the Chinese Nationalist government to flee to the island of Formosa (Taiwan).

1978 - Former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir died.

1980 - John Lennon, former member of the Beatles, was shot and killed in New York City by a deranged fan.

1987 - President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the first treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the
two superpowers.

1993 - President Bill Clinton signed The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into law.

[seamusTX]

1982 - A deranged Texas native took hostages at the Washington monument and threatened to blow it up as a protest against nuclear weapons.

He was fatally shot by police. It turned out he did not possess a bomb, although he had tried to buy explosives months earlier.

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It's odd how this event coincided with the signing of the START treaty.

- Jim

[ELB]

...
1993 - President Bill Clinton signed The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into law.

There is a marker commemorating the signing in at the German-English School on the grounds of the Marriott Plaza San Antonio hotel, where the agreement was officially signed, and where I married my wife in 2000. We picked it because the German-English school is very pretty, not because of the marker. Worth a visit (the school, not the marker) if you are touristing in San Antonio.