On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks broke the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, which resulted in her arrest. The driver of the bus came back to tell her to give up her eat. She said, "No." And he said, "Well, if you don't stand up I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested." And she said, "You may do that."
Her arrest led to a boycott of the city's buses lead by Martin Luther King Jr., who was 26 years old. A boycott that went on for over a year and eventually helped lead to the end of segregation. Picture of Rosa Parks

The state of the planet is broken, and now is the time to transform humankind’s relationship with the natural world and with each other, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in an address at Columbia University in New York.
He said the world is facing a devastating pandemic, global warming, ecological degradation and setbacks in achieving sustainable development.
But as human activities are at the root of this "descent towards chaos", human action can help solve it.
"Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21^st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere. In this context, the recovery from the pandemic is an opportunity. We can see rays of hope in the form of a vaccine. But there is no vaccine for the planet. Nature needs a bailout."
The UN chief said overcoming the pandemic could be an opportunity to transform the world economy through promotion of renewable energy sources, which will create new jobs, cleaner infrastructure and a resilient future.
He also stressed the need for all countries to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
(The Paris Agreement on Climate Change was adopted in 2015)

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Last night, a 14-ton, 82-foot-tall spruce tree was the biggest spectacle in New York City. After years of pandemic restrictions, crowds were back to see the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center. Camille Petersen tried to go, but she only got close. She has this report from a very long line in Manhattan.
CAMILLE PETERSEN, BYLINE: In the hours before the tree lighting, getting around Rockefeller Center meant walking shoulder to shoulder with a crowd that stretched across a full sidewalk and off the curb. It's Amanda Kelley's first Christmas season as a New Yorker.
AMANDA KELLEY: It's a lot of people - probably the most people I've seen in one location in New York so far.
PETERSEN: Everyone's looking for a way to get closer to Rockefeller Center. And it turns out, that means standing in the three-block line. I find the end of the line and join it. But about 15 minutes before the ceremony is supposed to begin, we all get bad news from a police officer yelling into the crowd - Rockefeller Center is full.
PETERSEN: The city is expecting 6.5 million visitors between Thanksgiving and New Year's. That's 85% of the record tourism number in the pre-pandemic year 2019. As the night goes on, more and more people gathered, still hoping to catch the glow of the tree. But their best bet was actually checking Rockefeller Center's Instagram for a clear shot of what happened at 9:57 p.m.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: 3, 2, 1.
PETERSEN: The tree glitters from the glow of 50,000 lights. It's topped with a 900-pound crystal-studded star - an extravagant, crowded start to the city's holiday season.

For the International Day Of Persons With Disabilities, a message from UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who’s called for greater inclusion for all those with a handicap, along with greater recognition and protection of their rights.
Specifically, Mr Guterres said that these rights included the right to go to school, live in the community, access health care and start a family.
Everyone should have the right to engage politically, to play sport, travel and have decent work, the UN chief insisted, in his message for the international day on 3 December.

On November 30, 1982 Jackson released “Thriller,” which earned him a record-breaking 8 Grammy Awards, including “Album of the Year.”
According to a news release, the documentary features never-before-seen footage and candid interviews.
The yet titled documentary chronicles the point in Jackson’s career that launched the singer into mega-stardom and created a pop culture phenomenon that is woven through the culture and continues to influence the worlds of music, television, dance, fashion and more to this day.
“The release of Thriller redefined Michael Jackson, taking him from teen star to adult superstar, who composed memorable songs, sang beautifully and reached the highest level of on-stage performance,” Nelson George said in the release.
“The album, and the short films they inspired, created a new template for marrying music and image. It’s been a privilege to explore this extraordinary album and revisit its magic.”
When a fledgling MTV, which programmed white rock artists almost exclusively, refused to play the video for “Billie Jean” Epic Records persisted.
Once the wall came crashing down, MTV’s ratings soared, and a door was opened for a generation of African American artists. Watch video

Willa Cather was born December 7, 1873 in Back Creek Valley, Virginia. At the age of nine she moved with her family to a farm in the Nebraska settler country. There she grew up among the immigrants from Europe, most of them coming from Scandinavia.
The new ranch was not a success, and in 1884 the family moved to a nearby small railroad town. Cather was educated at home, and later she attended Red Cloud High School.
In 1890 Cather moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, to escape the conservatism of the small town. She then spent 10 years in Pittsburgh, first as a newspaper-woman and then as a high-school teacher of English and Latin.
At the age of 32, Cather moved to New York to edit McClure's Magazine. She was 40 when her first book "O Pioneers!" appeared. She resigned in 1912 from McClure's and began writing full-time.
In 1922 Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "One of Ours." Altogether she wrote twelve novels and a lot of short fiction.
Cather died on April 24, 1947.

James Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio on December 8, 1894.
While playing a game of William Tell, his brother William shot him in the eye with an arrow. Because of the lack of medical technology, he lost his eye.
From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attended The Ohio State University. He never graduated from the University because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a mandatory course.
From 1918 to 1920, at the close of World War I, Thurber worked as a code clerk for the Department of State, first in Washington, D.C. and then in Paris. After this he returned to Columbus, where he began his writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch from 1921 to 1924.
In 1925, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, getting a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Post. Many of his short stories are humorous fictional memoirs from his life, but he also wrote darker material. "The Dog Who Bit People" and "The Night the Bed Fell" are his most well known short stories.
Thurber was married twice. His second marriage lasted until he died in 1961, at the age of 66.

Land and water resources are critically stressed, following a significant deterioration in their availability over the past decade, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday.
If world food production trends continue, to feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050 - producing the additional 50 per cent more food that will be needed - could require an increase of 35 per cent in water withdrawals alone.
This could create environmental disasters, increase competition for resources, and fuel new social challenges and conflicts, FAO said, in a new report.
Head of agency Qu Dongyu warned that current patterns of food production "are not proving sustainable".
But the FAO chief countered this by adding that agriculture "can play a major role in alleviating these pressures and contributing positively to climate and development goals".
Solutions include better land and water governance that will benefit millions of smallholder farmers, women, youth and indigenous peoples; for they are the most vulnerable, and face the greatest food insecurity.

Guns are bad. Full stop. I’m fed up hearing about people who think they have a right to carry a gun. A gun is a deadly weapon. People who are for guns say people are the deadly ones.
That’s stupid. The truth is, that if there were no guns in the world, there’d be more people alive. Students with guns kill other students at school. No guns, no deaths. Guns are used in millions of crimes around the world. Gun crime is out of control in many countries. The societies in which guns are illegal have very little gun crime.
The problem is that guns aren’t going away. They are getting easier to buy. Now that many international borders are open, smuggling guns to other countries is easy. Maybe the whole world will return to the Wild West.

Steven Hicks was 18, had just graduated high school, and was hitchhiking. Someone driving by offered him a beer, took him back to a house, and killed him. Steven Tuomi was 24 and a short-order cook. Jamie Doxtator was 14 but already almost 6 feet tall. Richard Guerrero was 22 and close with his mother. They were the first of 17 men and boys - most of them Black, Asian or Latino - murdered by the same man between 1978 and 1991. They were brutalized and horribly violated.
We mention their names now because their killer has become a household name all over again. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms, 30 years ago then, killed in prison. And he is now the subject of a popular new series on Netflix. I covered some of the investigations into this man's crimes. I remember testimonies about clues the Milwaukee police failed to follow. I remember families in the courthouse holding onto one another as every agonizing detail of the death of their loved one was presented and documented in crime scene photos and in the dry recitation of Dr. Jentzen, the medical examiner.
I am embarrassed that this week, I had to look up the names of those who were killed - Anthony Sears, Raymond Smith, Edward Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter and Errol Lindsey. Eric Perry, who identified himself as Earl Lindsey's relative, posted this week on Twitter, it is retraumatizing over and over again. And for what? How many movies, shows, documentaries do we need?
There have already been four films, a raft of true crime TV episodes, and at least 10 documentaries about the killer - not a great artist, citizen or scientist, but a serial murderer, the man who killed Anthony Hughes and Konerak Sinthasomphone and Matthew Turner. Of course, crime sells in entertainment. I enjoy reading murder mysteries and watching crime dramas. But is making so many films and series that put all the attention on a killer, like this one, risk flaming the idea in some violent minds that you can become famous and remembered in America by committing terrible crimes? Jeremiah Weinberger was murdered by that man, too. And Oliver Lacy and Joseph Bradehoft. Today, let's remember them.

It was on this date in 1577 Sir Francis Drake set off on a trip around the world commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I. He was her own royally sanctioned pirate. He left with a fleet of five ships. In the end only his own ship, the Golden Hind, completed the voyage around the world. He sailed from England across the Atlantic over to South America through the Strait of Magellan. Made his way up the Pacific coast, up all the way to northern California and then around the Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, and home to Plymouth, his ship heavy-laden with gold, and silver, and spices.
Video: Francis Drake - World Explorer from PBS

If you’re a migrant, chances are that your pay packet is considerably smaller than other people’s, where you work.
That’s the finding of a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), which has found that the wage gap between migrants and national workers is 13 per cent – and growing.
The wage gap was highest in Cyprus, at 42 per cent, with Italy at 30 per cent and Austria at 25 per cent. For the European Union it was less than the global average, at under nine per cent.
The wage discrepancy can be explained in part by differences in education, skills and experience.
But discrimination is the main reason why migrants earn less, said ILO’s Michelle Leighton, chief of ILO’s Labour Migration Branch.
"Tackling discrimination and prejudices that are deeply entrenched in the workplace and our society is more important than ever. And addressing the migrant pay gap is not only a matter of social justice, but it's also important to reduce inequalities between women and men, to reduce income inequalities between households and basically reduce povery over all."
Women migrants face a double dose of wage discrimination, ILO warned, as they often work in domestic or caregiver settings, earning less than nationals and less than male migrants, on average.

And it was on this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wrights had their first successful flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They went there because there were sand dunes that would cushion crash landings. And where there were high winds helping to get the plane off the ground. But there were a lot of crash landings.
And as the Wright brothers left Kitty Hawk on the train going back to Ohio, Wilbur told his brother, "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly."

On this day in 1932, the British Empire Service — now known as the BBC World Service — went on the air as a shortwave service to send news and messages to the outposts of the British Empire.

It was on this day in 1620 the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. Bad weather had forced them off course. Winter was imminent so they decided to stay. Most people spent the winter on board the ship; others went ashore to build some shelter.
The region was home to about 40'000 Indians, the Wampanoag Indians, Wampanoag which means "the people of the first light." The Pilgrims did not meet the Indians until March of the following year. They made a treaty with the chief, Massasoit, to establish peaceful relations. And one man, named Squanto, had spent some time in London agreed to live with the Pilgrims and show them how to plant native crops.
(You’re crammed in a room, shoulder-to-shoulder with 100 other passengers. It’s dark. It smells. It’s wet and very cold. There’s no privacy. No bathrooms. Your meals are pitiful — salted meat and a hard, dry biscuit. You, and people around you are sick, because the room is rocking side to side. There’s no fresh water and no change of clean clothes. In essence, you‘re trapped because land is thousands of miles away.
These conditions seem inhumane, but this was the Mayflower ship, the Pilgrims’ only means of transportation to a better life in the New Land.)
Video: What Life on the Mayflower Voyage Was Like

It was on Christmas Eve in 1906, the first radio program was broadcast. Professor Reginald Fessenden sent his signals from the 420-foot radio tower at Brant Rock on the Massachusetts seacoast. And he opened the program by playing "O Holy Night" on the violin, then verses from the Gospel of St. Luke, anad then broadcast a gramophone version of Handel’s "Largo."
(His signal was received up to five miles away.
Fessenden in his "studio."
The hourlong radio program began at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The broadcast included e.g. seasonal Bible readings, Fessenden’s own violin rendition of “O Holy Night” and a recording of Handel’s "Largo.")

Christmas Day - a day first celebrated as Christmas back in the year 336. Constantine, the first Roman emperor who professed to be a Christian, decided to mark the holiday on December the 25^th.It was nine months after the feast day of annunciation, usually celebrated around the spring equinox, around March the 25^th.
For the first few centuries of Christianity however, there was great resistance to the idea of observing the birth of Jesus Christ, or indeed any saint.
Because early Christians believed that birthdays should be mourned, not celebrated, because that is the day the people are born into lives of suffering. Instead, Christians celebrated the day that a saint was martyred, the day of their true birth into the spiritual realm. So people celebrated the Epiphany — the baptism of Jesus — and Easter — his death and resurrection — instead.

It is the anniversary of the first movie screening for which people paid admission. In 1895 at the at the Grand Café in Paris the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, got an audience to pay to watch their film "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory." It was 46 seconds long, a single shot with a static camera. Showing the factory gates opening, dozens of workers pouring out into the street, some on foot, some on bicycle and ended with the gate being closed.
Watch the movie

It was on this date 1065 Westminster Abbey was consecrated in London; there had been a monastery there in the late 8^th century and in 1040 King Edward the Confessor ordered construction of a new stone church.
By the time it was consecrated 25 year later he was too ill to attend. He died a few weeks later and he was buried in front of the high altar.
Westminster Abbey
King Edward the Confessor
Both pictures from the Bayeux Tapestry
History of Westminster Abbey

1890 on this day federal troops killed almost 300 Lakota men, women, and children in the massacre at Wounded Knee. One of the survivors was Black Elk, the medicine man, who was 27 years old at the time of the massacre.
He wrote: "... I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."
Map

It was on this date in 1879 that Thomas Edison demonstrated his first incandescent light bulb. He didn't invent it, but he had developed a more practical design, which would burn longer. Carbonized filament inside a glass vacuum bulb. It would burn for more than 13 hours. Edison said, "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
Light bulbs