December 20 - What happened today?

Home What happened today in history? Blamepro's Almanac for December 20
In the headlines today:

2004	Chicago blues singer-guitarist Son Seals dies of complications from diabetes, at age 62.
1999	Country singer Hank Snow dies in Nashville, at age 85.
1995	An American Airlines Boeing 757 jetliner crashes into a mountain near Buga, Colombia, killing 163 of the 167 people aboard.
1989	Operation Just Cause begins with the US sending troops into Panama to remove General Manuel Noriega from power.
1987	The Philippine passenger ship Dona Paz collides with a tanker off Mindoro island, killing more than 3,000 passengers and crew.
1976	Chicago mayor Richard Daley dies at age 74.
1973	Singer Bobby Darin dies during heart surgery at age 37.
1968	Author John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) dies in New York at age 66.
1963	The Berlin Wall opened for the first time during the holidays (it closed again on Jan 6, 1964).
1938	The iconoscope television system, forerunner of the modern TV, is patented by Vladimir Zworykin of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.
1920	Entertainer Bob Hope (born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, England, on May 29, 1903) becomes a US citizen. (photo credit: NARA)
1879	Thomas Edison gives a private demonstration of the incandescent light at his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory.
1860	South Carolina is the first state to secede from the Union, at the start of the US Civil War.
1803	The US makes the Louisiana Purchase, obtaining the Louisiana territories from France for $15 million dollars.
1606	Captain Christopher Newport sets sail from England to establish the first permanent settlement in what would become Jamestown, Virginia.