On This Day

What Happened on December 1 in History

8 events that happened on December 1, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.

Colonial America and the Revolution

1779
George Washington's army settles into winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey.
Soldiers built a city of more than 1,000 log huts in the New Jersey woods, while Washington made his headquarters in the Ford Mansion. The winter that followed was the worst of the century and brought severe hunger to the poorly supplied army.
Source: history.com; nps.gov

1862
President Abraham Lincoln sends Congress an annual message proposing gradual, compensated emancipation.
Written weeks after the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the message offered a moderate plan to end slavery while insisting that people already freed by Union armies would remain free. Its closing called the nation the last best hope of earth.
Source: history.com; millercenter.org
1873
President Ulysses S. Grant addresses the Panic of 1873 in his annual message to Congress.
Grant reported that federal revenues had fallen because of the financial panic that began in September. He argued that the nation's currency had held up well during the crisis and urged Congress to heed its lessons.
Source: millercenter.org

1934
Soviet Communist leader Sergei Kirov is shot dead in Leningrad.
Kirov, the popular party chief of Leningrad, was killed by Leonid Nikolayev, likely at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. Stalin used the murder as a pretext for the sweeping purges and show trials of the following years.
Source: history.com; pbs.org

1955
Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her bus seat.
Parks, a seamstress and longtime NAACP member, was jailed for violating the city's bus segregation laws. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, a turning point in the civil rights movement.
Source: history.com; archives.gov
1958
A fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago kills 92 children and three nuns.
The blaze started in the basement of the crowded Catholic grade school, which had no sprinklers, and smoke trapped students in their classrooms. The disaster led to major changes in school fire safety rules.
Source: history.com; guides.library.illinois.edu
1959
Twelve nations sign the Antarctic Treaty, banning military activity on the continent.
The United States and the Soviet Union were among the signers of the agreement, which also banned weapons testing in Antarctica. It was the first arms control agreement of the Cold War era.
Source: history.com
1984
NASA and the FAA deliberately crash a remotely piloted Boeing 720 to study airliner safety.
The Controlled Impact Demonstration flew the empty jetliner into the ground by remote control. Instruments and test dummies aboard measured the forces of the crash to help make passenger planes more survivable.
Source: ntrs.nasa.gov