This Day In History

On December 10
1520
Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict. The papacy demanded that he recant or face excommunication. Luther refused and was formally expelled from the church in January 1521.
1851
American librarian, Melvil Dewey, was born. He created the "Dewey Decimal Classification" system.
1901
The first Nobel prizes were awarded.
1906
President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1953
Hugh Hefner published the first "Playboy" magazine with an investment of $7,600.
1958
The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the U.S. when 111 passengers flew from New York to Miami on a National Airlines Boeing 707.
1964
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the youngest person to receive the award.
1993
The crew of the space shuttle Endeavor deployed the repaired Hubble Space Telescope into Earth's orbit.
1994
Advertising executive Thomas Mosser of North Caldwell, NJ, was killed by a mail bomb that was blamed on the Unabomber.
1996
South Africa's President Mandela signed into law a new democratic constitution, completing the country's transition from white-minority rule to a non-racial democracy.
1999
After three years under suspicion of being a spy for China, computer scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested. He was charged with removing secrets from the Los Alamos weapons lab. Lee later plead guilty to one count of downloading restricted data to tape and was freed. The other 58 counts were dropped.
2003
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld new restrictions on political advertising in the weeks before an election. The court did strike down two provisions of the new law that involved a ban on political contibutions from those too young to vote and a limitation on some party spending. (McConnell v. FEC, 02-1674)
2003
The U.S. barred firms based in certain countries, opponents of the Iraq war, from bidding on Iraqi reconstruction projects. The ban did not prevent companies from winning subcontracts.