December 12

627 – Battle at Nineveh: Byzantine emperor Heraclius beats Perzen
1098 – First Crusaders capture and plunder Mara Syria
1791 – Bank of US opens
1792 – In Vienna, Ludwig Von Beethoven at the age of 22 receives first lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn
1915 – First all-metal aircraft (Junkers J-1) test flown at Dessau, Germany
1925 – Arthur Heinman coins term “motel”; opens Motel Inn, San Luis Obispo
1925 – Last Qajar Shah of Iran deposed; Rezā Shāh Pahlavi takes over
1946 – Tide detergent introduced
1953 – Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane
1957 – US announces manufacture of Borazon (harder than diamond)
1961 – Martin Luther King Jr and 700 demonstrators arrested in Albany Ga
1963 – Frank Sinatra Jr returned after being kidnapped
1965 – Beatles’ last concert in Great Britain
1979 – Gold hits record $462.50 an ounce
1980 – US’s copyright law amended to include computer programs
1988 – PLO leader Yasi Arafat accepts Israel’s right to exist
1991 – Maastricht Treaty signed to create a European Community
1997 – Japanese train builders (Maglev) claim world speed record at 332 MPH
1997 – Fed judge sentences Autumn Jackson, who claims to be Bill Cosby’s daughter, to 26 months for trying to extort $40 million from him
2000 – The US Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore
Birth
1957 – Jerry Lee Lewis weds his cousin Myra Gale Brown, 13, while still married to his first wife Jane Mitcham
1915 – Frank Sinatra, Hoboken New Jersey, American singer/actor, (d. 1998)
1863 – Edvard Munch, Løten, Norway, painter/print maker (d. 1944)