December 22 (UPI) – On this date in history:
In 1785, the navy of the American Continental Navy was formed, consisting of two frigates, two brigs and three schooners. Sailors were paid $ 8 per month.
In 1894, French Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason by an armed court-martial on flimsy evidence in a highly arbitrary trial and was sentenced to life in prison for the crime he committed for providing military secrecy to the Germans. Dreyfus was released from prison in 1899 and officially released in 1906.
In 1944, ordered to surrender by Nazi soldiers whose unit was locked south of Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of Bulge, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe of the U.S. Air Department 101st with one word: “Nuts!”
In 1984, Bernhard Goetz’s “subway vigilante” shot and wounded four men who would be holdup men on the New York City subway. He spent eight months in prison for carrying illegal weapons but was evicted from assault and tried murder charges.
In 1986, political dissident and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, were allowed to return to Moscow after seven years of domestic exile.
Yelena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, shakes a greeting as she passes the American flag at Logan Airport in Boston on May 24, 1986. File photo by Jim Bourg / UPI
In 1989, Roman President Nicolae Ceausescu, the last hard communist arrest against East Bloc reforms, fell from power against major demonstrations.
In 1992, all 157 people on board Flight 1103 Libyan Arab Airlines died when the jetliner crashed, apparently after a plane crash.
In 2001, American Airlines passengers and attendants overpowered a man trying to ignite a game to detonate a powerful explosive hidden in his sneakers on a flight from Paris to Miami. .
In 2005, Walmart was ordered to pay more than 100,000 $ 172 million California workers for removing them from eating.
In 2006, rape charges were dropped against three former members of the Duke University lacrosse team after the accused victim said she could not be sure she had been raped.
In 2010, President Barack Obama introduced into law the ban on gay and lesbian people from openly serving in the U.S. military. The “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” legislation was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton in 1994.
File photo by Jim Lo Scalzo / UPI
In 2015, SpaceX successfully returned the company’s Falcon 9 rocket to Earth, and landed it directly on a landing pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla., – 10 minutes after it exploded for its box into space and back.
In 2018, the U.S. government began partially closing 35 days after the Senate was unable to approve a funding bill.
File photo by Pat Benic / UPI