On Dec. 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution.
In 1796 electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the United States.
In 1842 the New York Philharmonic gave its first concert.
In 1873 novelist Willa Cather was born near Winchester, Va.
In 1941 Japanese forces attacked American and British territories in the Pacific, including the home base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
In 1963 during the Army-Navy game, videotaped instant replay was used for the first time in a live sports telecast.
In 1972 America’s last moon mission, Apollo 17, was launched from Cape Canaveral.
In 1982 murderer Charlie Brooks became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by injection, in Huntsville, Texas.
In 1985 retired Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, 70, died in Hanover, N.H.
In 1993 a gunman opened fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train in New York, killing six people and wounding 17.
In 1994 PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat pledged to protect Israelis from extremists.
In 2001 Taliban forces abandoned their last bastion in Afghanistan, fleeing the southern city of Kandahar.
In 2002 Iraq formally denied to the UN having weapons of mass destruction.
