Manawatu Standard (New Zealand)
December 2, 2017 Saturday
Today in history, DEC 2
1409 – The University of Leipzig opens.
1620 – English language newspaper Namloos begins publishing in Amsterdam
1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor of France in Paris, taking the crown from attending Pope Pius VII.
1816 – The first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opens for business.
1848 – Austria's Emperor Ferdinand I abdicates in favour of Franz Joseph I.
1920 – Armenia cedes territory to Turkey by Treaty of Alexandropol while Communists seize power in Armenian capital Yerevan and proclaim a Soviet republic.
1942 – Nuclear chain reaction is demonstrated for the first time by scientists working on the secret Manhattan Project underneath the University of Chicago's football stadium.
1954 – United States Senator Joseph McCarthy is censured by the Senate for browbeating army personnel with his communist witch- hunts.
1969 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its debut as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, fly from Seattle to New York City.
1971 – Britain terminates all treaties with crucial states in the Gulf, leading to formation of United Arab Emirates.
1982 – In the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Centre implant a permanent artificial heart. Barney Clark, a retired dentist, lives 112 days with the device.
1993 – Drug lord Pablo Escobar, one of the world's most wanted men, is killed in a gunfight with security forces in Colombia, 16 months after he escaped from prison.
2001 – Enron, the largest United States energy-trading company, files for bankruptcy protection, dealing a blow to financial markets worldwide. It is the largest bankruptcy in United States history.
2006 – Fidel Castro fails to attend a military parade marking the 50th anniversary of the date he and his rebels launched their revolution, fuelling speculation that the ailing Cuban leader may not ever return to power.
2010 – Swedish authorities win a court ruling in their bid to arrest the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for questioning in a rape case.