Moments in Time: Leaning Tower of Pisa
The History Channel
On December 16, 1773, a group of highly disgruntled Boston colonists board three ships loaded with taxed tea from Britain. While it would undoubtedly have been enjoyed by the locals, following the refusal of officials to return it, the men hurled the tea into Boston Harbor as a form of protest against "taxation without representation."
On December 18, 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson discovered human remains in the Piltdown gravel pit in Sussex, England. Dubbed the "Piltdown Man," he was thought to represent the missing evolutionary link between apes and mankind until it was confirmed at a 1953 international congress of paleontologists that the specimen was a fraud, consisting of skull parts both human and orangutan.
On December 12, 1917, with a loan of $90, Father Edward Flanagan founds an orphanage originally called The City of Little Men, dedicated to caring for at-risk children, with national headquarters in the village of Boys Town, Nebraska, for which it was later renamed.
On December 17, 1969, the U.S. Air Force closes its "Project Blue Book,'' started in 1952 to determine whether UFOs were a threat to national security and to analyze UFO-related data. The closure came after concluding there was no actual evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind the 12,618 UFO sightings it had collected.
On December 13, 1978, the U.S. government honors women's suffrage icon Susan B. Anthony by minting a dollar coin named for her, but its close similarity to the quarter ultimately doomed it for public acceptance.
On December 14, 1997, in advance of a visit from Pope John Paul II, Cuban president Fidel Castro declares Christmas to be an official holiday for the first time since his takeover in 1959.
On December 15, 2001, the Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens to the public after a team of experts spent 11 years repairing it, at a cost of over 30 million euros. While the Tower was stabilized, this third attempt at eliminating its famous lean also notably failed.
(c) 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.