Browsing: December 12

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on December 12th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On December 12, 884, the King of West Francia, Carloman II, son of Louis the Stammerer (Louis II), died in a hunting accident. On December 12, 1098, in what is now Syria, Crusaders massacred 20,000 Muslims and ate some of them! On December 12, 1862, the United States ship, USS Cairo, an iron-clad gunboat of the City-class, was sunk in the Yazoo…

A Brief History On December 12, 2021, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was won by Max Verstappen, beating Lewis Hamilton because of a mistaken conduct of a “safety car” restart at the end of the race.  Later investigation showed that race officials “misapplied” the rules, costing Hamilton his 8th Formula 1 World Championship. Digging Deeper Sometimes game or event officials blow a call or fail to make a call and cost a team or player a championship or important game.  Two of those incidents include: In 2010, Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was robbed of a perfect game by a wrong…

A Brief History On December 12, 1937, the USS Panay, a gunboat afloat on the Yangtze River near the city of Nanking (now called Nanjing) was attacked by Japanese military aircraft and sunk, with the loss of three American lives.  The United States and Japan were not at war and the incident was claimed by the Japanese to be due to mistaken identity of the American ship, despite clear American flags painted on the decks.  The Panay was not the first, nor the last, American vessel to be attacked by forces of another country not at war with the United…

A Brief History On December 12, 1939, an all too familiar scenario developed when two British warships collided, resulting in the sinking of the smaller vessel including considerable loss of life.  While escorting the battleship HMS Barnham from the Mediterranean Sea back to Britain, the destroyer HMS Duchess was accidentally rammed by the huge warship in a dense fog off the Southwest coast of Scotland, knocking the destroyer upside down (capsized) which triggered the depth charges the destroyer carried to explode, destroying the smaller ship and sinking her in short order, taking many of her crew with her.  Ship collisions…

A Brief History On December 12, 1862, the United States ship, USS Cairo, an iron-clad gunboat of the City-class, was sunk in the Yazoo River by a remotely detonated Confederate “torpedo,” what naval mines were called back then.  The Cairo became the first ship ever sunk by a remote control mine.  (The Cairo was named after the city of Cairo, Illinois.) Digging Deeper Commissioned on January 25, 1862, Cairo was at first an Army gunboat, 175 feet long and 51 feet wide, protected by 2 ½ inches of plate armor, with a maximum thickness of 3 ½ inches of railway…