On Dec. 5, 1776, the first scholastic fraternity in America, Phi Beta Kappa, was organized at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
In 1782 the first native U.S. president, Martin Van Buren, was born in Kinderhook, N.Y.
In 1791 composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna; he was 35.
In 1792 George Washington was re-elected president; John Adams was re-elected vice president.
In 1831 former President John Quincy Adams took his seat as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1848 President James Polk triggered the Gold Rush of ’49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.
In 1901 filmmaker Walt Disney was born in Chicago.
In 1902 Strom Thurmond, who would become the longest sitting U.S. senator, was born in Edgefield, S.C.
In 1933 national prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.
In 1935 singer Little Richard was born Richard Penniman in Macon, Ga.
In 1955 the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO under its first president, George Meany.
In 1978 the American space probe Pioneer Venus 1, orbiting Venus, began beaming back its first information and picture of the planet.
In 1988 a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted PTL founder Jim Bakker and former aide Richard Dortch on fraud and conspiracy charges. (Bakker was convicted of all counts; Dortch pleaded guilty to four counts and cooperated with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence.)
In 1991 Richard Speck, who murdered eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966, died in prison a day short of his 50th birthday.
In 1993 a Palestinian boarded a bus and opened fire with an assault rifle in the first major attack in Israel since the signing of a peace pact with the PLO; the gunman killed a reservist before being gunned down.
In 1994 Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be the first GOP House speaker in four decades.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton announced the foreign policy team for his second term, including Madeleine Albright as the first female secretary of state; William Cohen as defense secretary; and Anthony Lake as CIA director.
In 1998 James P. Hoffa claimed the Teamsters presidency after challenger Tom Leedham conceded defeat in the union’s presidential election. Also in 1998 former Sen. Albert Gore Sr., father of the vice president, died in Carthage, Tenn.; he was 90.
In 1999 Cuban President Fidel Castro demanded that the United States return 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez, who was rescued at sea, to his father in Cuba within 72 hours.
In 2001 Afghan leaders signed a pact in Germany to create an interim government.
In 2003 the two makers of flu shots in the United States, Chiron and Aventis Pasteur, announced they had run out of vaccine and would not be able to meet a surge in demand. Also in 2003 a suicide bombing on a commuter train in southern Russia killed 44 people. Also in 2003 a federal judge in Utah threw out the case against two civic leaders accused of bribery in their efforts to bring the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City.
In 2005 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied the United States engaged in torture or lesser forms of cruel treatment against terror suspects.
