December 8: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1660 - A woman (either Margaret Hughes orAnne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemonain a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.
2. 1927 - The Brookings Institution, one of the United States' oldest think tanks, is founded through the merger of three organizations that had been created by philanthropist Robert S. Brookings.
3. 1953 - United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, and the U.S. launches its "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment and information to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world.
4. 1993 - The North American Free Trade Agreement is signed into law by US President Bill Clinton.
5. 2010 - The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus at a distance of about 80,800 km.
6. Famous Birthdays: Mary Queen of Scots, Eli Whitney (American inventor, invented the cotton gin), William C. Durant (American businessman, founded General Motors and Chevrolet), Camille Claudel (French illustrator and sculptor), Thomas R. Cech (American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: December 7

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: December 9

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.