13 December: Drake Sets Out; Tasman Sights New Zealand, Fires, Misses; Slavers Defeat Yanks At Fredericksburg; Wood In Europe; Chosin Reservoir Breakout; Sweaty Teddy & Skunk Both 61(?)

Today is Sunday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2009. There are 18 days left in the year. From UPI, also.Today's Highlight in History:
On Dec. 13, 1862, Confederate forces dealt Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg.
On this date:
In 1577, Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.
In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted present-day New Zealand.
In 1769, Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., received its charter.
In 1816, the United States' first savings bank, the Provident Institution for Savings, opened in Boston.
In 1835, Phillips Brooks, the American Episcopal bishop who wrote the words to "O Little Town of Bethlehem," was born in Boston.
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to attend the post-World War I peace conference at Versailles, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

In 1944, the U.S. cruiser Nashville was badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack that claimed more than 130 lives.
In 1978, the Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which went into circulation in July 1979.
In 1981, authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. (Martial law formally ended in 1983.)

In 1982, the Sentry armored car company in New York discovered the overnight theft of $11 million from its headquarters. It was the biggest cash theft in U.S. history at the time.
In 1988, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to visit New York.
In 1989, South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town.
In 1994, an American Eagle commuter plane crashed short of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, killing 15 of the 20 people on board.
In 1996, the U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to be the world body's seventh secretary-general.
In 1997, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in Los Angeles for the 1 billion-dollar Getty Center, one of the largest arts centers in the United States. Michigan Wolverine Charles Woodson was named winner of the Heisman Trophy, the first primarily defensive player so honored.
In 1999, in a spirited presidential campaign debate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain fought over tax policy and farm subsidies, while McCain was pushed to defend his centerpiece campaign finance proposals. A group of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service detainees, mostly Cubans, took the warden of the St. Martin Parish Jail in Louisiana and three guards hostage, demanding freedom. (Two hostages were released as two detainees surrendered on Dec. 15; the remaining hostage-takers surrendered Dec. 18.)
In 2000, Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency 36 days after Election Day.
In 2001, the Pentagon released a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader said the deaths and destruction achieved by the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations. Five suspected Islamic militants killed nine people in an attack on India's parliament before being killed themselves. President George W. Bush served formal notice that the United States was pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
In 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal. President Bush announced he would take the smallpox vaccine along with US military forces, but was not recommending the potentially risky inoculation for most Americans. The U.N. Security Council condemned "acts of terror" against Israel in Kenya and deplored the claims of responsibility by the al-Qaida terror network.
In 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole at a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.

In 2004, a jury in Redwood City, Calif., recommended the death penalty for Scott Peterson for the murders of his wife and unborn child. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe resigned. A Chilean judge indicted former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet on charges of kidnapping nine political dissidents and killing one of them during his 17-year military regime. (However, Pinochet never faced trial, and died in 2006 at age 91.)
In 2006, President Bush held high-level talks at the Pentagon, after which he said he would "not be rushed" into a decision on a strategy change for Iraq. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) underwent emergency surgery after suffering bleeding in his brain. Lamar Hunt, the owner of football's Kansas City Chiefs who coined the term "Super Bowl," died in Dallas at age 74.
In 2007, a landmark report implicated 89 U.S. major league baseball players, some of them the most dominant figures of the era, in the use of steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Also in 2007, a federal jury in Miami acquitted one of seven Florida men charged with conspiring to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower and was unable to reach a verdict on the rest. A mistrial was declared for the other six.
In 2008, the White House weighed its options for preventing a collapse of the troubled U.S. auto industry. Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy after guiding the highest-scoring team in major college football history to the national championship game.
Today's Birthdays: Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz is 89. Actor-comedian Dick Van Dyke is 84. Actor Christopher Plummer is 80. Country singer Buck White is 79. Music/film producer Lou Adler is 76. Movie producer Richard Zanuck is 75. Singer John Davidson is 68. Actress Kathy Garver ("Family Affair") is 64. Rock musician Ted Nugent is 61. Rock musician Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is 61. [Double dose of right-wing libertarian guitarists. Maybe there is something to astrology. — Ed.] Country musician Ron Getman is 61. Actor Robert Lindsay is 60. Country singer-musician Randy Owen is 60. Actress Wendie Malick is 59.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is 59. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is 56. Country singer John Anderson is 55. Singer-songwriter Steve Forbert is 55. Singer-actor Morris Day is 53. Actor Steve Buscemi is 52. Actor Johnny Whitaker is 50. Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx is 42. Actor Bart Johnson is 39. TV personality Debbie Matenopoulos is 35. Rock singer-musician Thomas Delonge is 34. Actor James Kyson Lee is 34. Actress Chelsea Hertford is 28. Rock singer Amy Lee (Evanescence) is 28. Country singer Taylor Swift is 20.
This Date's Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, poet (1797); Werner von Siemens, electrical engineer and inventor (1816); Mary Todd Lincoln (1818); Emily Carr, painter (1871); Sgt. Alvin York, World War I hero (1887); Ella Baker, civil rights activist (1903); Van Heflin, actor (1910); Archie Moore, prizefighter (1913); Ross Macdonald, novelist (1915).
Today In Entertainment History December 13
In 1928, George Gershwin's musical work "An American in Paris" had its premiere, at Carnegie Hall in New York.
In 1974, former Beatle George Harrison visited the White House at the invitation of Jack Ford, the president's son. Harrison was the first rock musician to be invited to the White House.
In 1985, singer Phil Collins made his TV acting debut in the US with an episode of "Miami Vice."
In 1988, singer Bruce Springsteen and model-actress Julianne Phillips divorced.
In 1992, an estimated 150,000 people showed up for a free Scorpions concert in Frankfurt, Germany. The concert was aimed at protesting violence by radical rightists.
Thought for Today: "A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few." — Judge Learned Hand, American jurist (1872-1961).