| 1997 | Auto racer Michael Andretti marries fitness model Leslie Wood.
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| 1995 | Twenty-three primates are killed in a fire at the Philadelphia Zoo.
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| 1993 | Clergyman and motivational author Norman Vincent Peale dies in Pawling, New York, at age 95.
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| 1990 | Actor Tom Cruise and actress Nicole Kidman are married.
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| 1984 | Actor and 'rat pack' member Peter Lawford (The Thin Man) dies in Los Angeles at age 61.
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| 1968 | Astronauts Frank Borman, William Anders, and Jim Lovell, aboard the Apollo 8 space craft, beam live photos of the moon and Earth back to terra firma.
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| 1948 | The first TV broadcast of a midnight Mass takes place from St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
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| 1943 |  US president Franklin D. Roosevelt names general Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme commander of Allied forces, during WWII.
Photo shows General Eisenhower (seated, left) and President Roosevelt (foreground) touring Allied assets in Castelvetrano, Sicily.
(photo credit: NARA)
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| 1871 | The Verdi opera Aida debuts in Cairo, Egypt, celebrating the opening of the Suez Canal.
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| 1863 | Author William Makepeace Thackeray dies in London, at age 52.
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| 1851 | A fire at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, destroys more than 25,000 books.
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| 1818 | The Franz Gruber/Josef Mohr composition Silent Night is sung for the first time, in Oberndorf, Germany.
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| 1814 | The US and Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
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| 1524 | Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama dies in Cochin, India.
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