What Happened on December 7?

  • Japanese bombers attack Pearl Harbor. (1941) The attack on the US naval base, known as "Operation Z" in Japan, was the catalyst that led to the United States entering World War II.

  • Delaware ratified the US constitution, making it the first official state of the United States. (1787) Delaware was the first of the original 13 American colonies to ratify the constitution, and retains the state nickname of "The First State".

  • The microwave oven was patented. (1945) The first item to be intentionally cooked in a microwave was popcorn — though microwave power had been accidentally discovered when a microwave device melted a chocolate bar in an unsuspecting engineer's pocket. The first commercial microwave was produced nine years later and sold for $2,000 USD.

  • Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the Republic of China, fled to Taipei with his government. (1949) People from the Republic of China had been moving to Taiwan after Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China in October of that year. Evacuation of the people, however, basically finished with Chiang's move on the 7th.

  • Pope Paul VI and orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I restored relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. (1965) In a mutual declaration, the religious leaders rescinded the mutual excommunication that their predecessors had issued when the Roman Catholic church and the Greek Orthodox church split in the Great Schism in 1054.

  • Instant replay was used for the first time in a live broadcast. (1963) CBS was the first network to use "video replay" during their live broadcast of the Army-Navy college football game.

  • The Copenhagen Summit began. (2009) The United Nations Climate Change Conference led to the signing of the Copenhagen Accord by the US, China, Brazil, South Africa and India. Th Copenhagen Accord put a renewed emphasis on the importance of environmental protection, and was intended to be a counterpart to the Kyoto Protocol in fighting global warming.

  • The Columbia 21 space shuttle landed safely after spending 18 days in space. (1996) The landing of the Columbia 21 was delayed for three days because of bad weather, leading to fears that the astronauts would run out of fuel and supplies before they could make their landing. The delayed landing made the Columbia's mission the longest of any of the space shuttle missions.

  • IBM sold its PC division to the Chinese company Lenovo. (2004) This made IBM-Lenovo the world's third largest PC business. The deal was valued at almost $2 billion US Dollars (USD).

  • Eugene Corri became the first referee to officiate in the boxing ring. (1907) The fight took place at London's National Sporting Club, and featured Canadian-born Tommy Burns who went on to beat the British Gunner Moir.

Discussion Comments

Hazali

From reading the third to last bullet point, I really get the impression that in some ways, humans just aren't ready to travel into outer space.

While it's true that we've done it many times, just look at all of the preparation that goes into doing so.

It's absolutely crazy. And even then, when we're ready to go into the great unknown, the problem is that anything can happen at any time, as we can clearly see here.

Because of bad weather in the atmosphere (apparently), they couldn't land the shuttle, and more than likely, almost ran out of fuel and supplies. In fact, has anyone seen a movie called Gravity?

Because reading this article highly reminds me of that, and just how dangerous space conditions can be.

Obviously, that's not to say that we should let things hold us back from our goals, but when traveling into space, we should take every single precaution that's necessary.

Krunchyman

I don't know about anyone else, but I actually find the third bullet point to funny, in an ironic sort of way that is. The main reason for this, is because of how the microwave was discovered, and most of all, how once again, it was an accident.

In fact, has anyone else noticed that more than often, a lot of these discoveries seem to be based on an accident. In my opinion, this is what makes many creations unique, as it's not even supposed to be intentional.

However, one thing that I have wonder is why the microwave was sold for such a high price when it was first sold nine years later. Does anyone know the reason for this?

While this is just a guess, I'm assuming that maybe it's because the public wasn't quite ready for this device yet. Either that, or it may be because since it has been around for quite a while before it was sold (nine years), it had already been at that price, and only those of the highest authority were able to buy one.

Overall though, it is rather interesting, and this article really hints how it's possible that many commercial items may have been around for a very long time before being "revealed" to the public, so to speak. I wonder what other inventions were part of this case.

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